Скачать или смотреть What’s The Logic? : Building a Decision-Friendly Digital Accessioning Program at Harvard Library

Julianna Barrera-Gomez, Harvard Library
NDSA Digital Preservation 2025 Conference Session 4B3

In spring of 2024, Harvard Library Digital Preservation Services established the Digital Accessioning Program (DAP) to support curatorial stewards across the Library and the wider University with their digital accessioning needs through a centralized service. Building on the 2015-2019 work of the Library's Digital Forensics Working Group, DAP was originally cast as a technical component of a disk imaging process that would be applied broadly. Digital Accessions Specialist Julianna Barrera-Gomez was tasked with launching the Program, informed by leading practices shared from other well-established programs at the University and at other institutions. Through working with pilot partners from various Harvard libraries, she saw an opportunity to revisit the assumptions of the earlier working group, particularly through the lens of meeting curatorial stewards where they are in terms of time and resources available for processing, funding for storage, and patron access planning. By discussing newer resources to aid in making decisions about the accessioning process (e.g. DANNNG’s Disk Imaging Decision Factors) as well as the downstream ethical and sustainability implications for adopting a disk-image-first digital accessions methodology (Lassere & Whyte 2022, Pendergrass 2017), Barrera-Gomez has built an adaptive, project-based program that allows curatorial stewards to feel informed and in control of the accessioning workflows they would like DAP to utilize for their collections materials. This presentation will share the outcomes of these pilot projects, dissect the reasoning behind a contextual approach from both curatorial stewards and DAP staff, and advocate for encouraging adaptive approaches that can better meet changing needs.