The Digital Preservation Coalition, of whom the university is a member, celebrated World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD) on 2nd November 2023. The theme for this year’s WDPD was Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort… "No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it!”. Fran Horner discusses her experience of being a new Archivist at the university whose remit is digital preservation.
My name is Fran and I am a new Archivist (or ‘musician’) at the University of Sheffield Special Collections, Heritage and Archives (my ‘orchestra’). Digital preservation (the ‘symphony’) falls under my remit in this new role.
It has been a really interesting experience over the last five months getting to grips with my new role and exploring this ‘orchestra’s’ ‘symphony’. I began by meeting my fellow musicians who manage digital archives and collections (or ‘notations’) which form the basis of the ‘symphony’, such as the Special Collections and Archives Managers, a fellow Archivist, the Library Systems team and the Digital Preservation Manager, Bryony Hooper, to name a few. I spent a few weeks studying the musicology of the symphony, for example I familiarised myself with the Digital Preservation Policy; I explored the structure and content of the digital repositories which hold the digital archives and collections; I read old and current digital preservation procedures and processes; I questioned my fellow musicians to find out what works well and what doesn’t work well with current systems and processes.
From studying the musicology, it was apparent that my fellow musicians faced many challenges when undertaking digital preservation activities (or ‘performing movements’) and there were many inconsistencies as the nature of the orchestra has changed and developed over time. The symphony was a bit out of tune.
Bryony and I used the findings to identify a few challenges to focus on in order to improve the musicians’ performance with what we already have. Firstly, I am refining the acquisition and accession processes of digital archives and collections which will guide the whole orchestra in safely and securely taking in new notations. Secondly, I have designed a new folder structure for the digital repositories that is being tested by the orchestra which I hope will allow the orchestra to perform their movements more efficiently and better preserve their notations in a consistent way over all the digital archives and collections. Thirdly, I have been liaising with the Library Systems team who are looking at securing a better solution for providing access to the orchestra’s notations in our public Reading Room.
I have learnt that this work would not be possible without the cooperation, communication and honesty of all the musicians within my orchestra. I am grateful for the resources and advice of other musicians and other orchestras such as the DPC and its community. I have also learnt that a symphony is not a fixed, one-size-fits-all system: it is nuanced and needs to be flexible to some extent to incorporate and accommodate new kinds of notations and movements which may come in the future.
This orchestra is just one of many which exist within the university who each play their own symphony which is made up of unique notations and movements. Bryony works with all the orchestras to understand their needs and advises them the best way to perform their movements in order to preserve their notations. Learning about musicians’ challenges and concerns is helping Bryony build a digital preservation service that meets the needs of the whole university.
I look forward to continuing to work with my orchestra to perform our best symphony.