Accessioning workstations

[Christie Peterson]

Hello All,

I'm putting together a budget request for an accessioning workstation and I'm curious what your setups are like. (For this discussion, accessioning = everything up to the point of AIP transfer to archival storage.) 

I'd really appreciate it if you could take some time out of your Friday to share:

• A general summary of your setup -- if your accessioning workflow involves multiple machines, what is each used for?
• I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who work with FREDs -- what other computing/workstation support have you found to be needed to achieve an archival/preservation accessioning workflow?
• Hardware specs and OS
• Is this a dedicated accessioning workstation or do you use it for additional functions as well (such as archival arrangement & description)?
• Do you plan a major upgrade or change in technology soon?
• If you could change anything about your workstation(s), what would you change?
• Anything else you'd like to share!

Based on our current holdings and projected collecting activities, our needs are highest for handling non-media-based accessions (e.g. network transfers), optical media and 3.5" IBM-formatted floppies, in that order. Of course, one big accession could change all that!

Thanks in advance,

Christie Peterson

Records Management Archivist

Johns Hopkins University

[Alexander Duryee]

Depending on the type of optical media you have in your collection, it
may be wise to purchase specialty hardware and obtain specific
software for the migration process. In short, optical media workflows
can be divided as:

CD-ROM/CD-R/DVD-ROM: Image disc (be careful of multi-FS discs!) using
any respectable drive
CD-DA (audio discs): Use top-quality drives (typically pre-2003
Plextor) and special software (cdparanoia, EAC). Read twice on two
different drives.
CD-RW: If the data is interesting enough, trick the drive into reading
every single sector ("erased" writes may be extant)
Mixed-mode CD-ROM+DA: See CD-DA and prepare for a very long day :)

In short, CD-DA will require the absolute best drives you can obtain,
and CD-RW may require special techniques for tricking the drive's
firmware (e.g. the ages-old 'swap trick') into returning a full read.
The reasons for this, and for migrating twice on two different drives,
are due to the very imprecise nature of reading CD-DA - I can provide
more in-depth reading on request. The FRED comes with a drive, but
frankly I wouldn't trust anything without sufficient empirical
documentation. Since you may be working with damaged/rotten CD-ROMs,
it would be prudent to spec your workstations as if for CD-DA
regardless of collection content.

There are other more exotic formats (SA-CD, VCD, DVD Audio, etc.) that
may or may not be in your collection. These aren't as
well-explored/documented as CD-ROM/DA/RW, so unfortunately it's hard
to make workstation recommendations.

Best of luck,
--Alex

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[Matthew McKinley]

Alex,

Would you mind providing some more in-depth info on reading CD-DA? I'm reading in cdparanoia's faq:

"... Cdparanoia will read correct, rock-solid audio data from inexpensive drives prone to misalignment, frame jitter and loss of streaming during atomic reads"

So would a Plextor drive and/or multiple reads be necessary for extracting WAV files written to off-the-shelf CDRs (i.e. not professional CD DA media)? If so, do you have any model recommendations for the Plextor drive? I'm not anticipating getting many audio CDs to image but may as well be as prepared as our budget allows.

Also I'm assuming WAV would be the target preservation format? This is already our preservation standard for purely born-digital audio but for removable digital media I've been reading for example to raw .001s (for floppies) and .iso (for DVDs) to capture the whole media and not just the content. I can't seem to find a workable equivalent for CD audio--ImgBurn creates BIN/CUE files, but these files won't load in VLC player as advertised.

I know these are a lot of "it depends"-type questions but any more documentation you could provide would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Matthew

Matthew McKinley
Digital Project Specialist, University of California, Irvine
about.me

[Alexander Duryee]

If the WAV files are written as files, then probably not; if they are
written as CD-DA, though, then absolutely yes. The main issue with
CD-DA is its lack of error correction: it trades one layer in exchange
for more raw data. As such, you'll need tools like cdparanoia or EAC,
which use a variety of methods to reliably read CD-DA sectors. Some
of these are reliant on drive features, such as error reporting, no
caching, and AccurateStream, and as such require quality drives. This
is also the reason why I suggest dumping a disc twice across different
drives - the unreliable nature of optical media means that a disc may
behave better in one drive.

(This is also why multitrack discs with ROM and DA are so difficult to
dump - it requires two very different processes, which must then be
stitched back together at the bit-level and the cuesheet. Very
time-consuming!)

For plain ol' CD-ROM, it's still a good idea to pick up a solid drive,
but less critical. Given the low price of hardware (~$100 for a
classic Plextor), there really isn't any reason not to.

I would use WAV as the preservation master for CD-DA. Here's a quick
example of WAVs as created by audio dumping software:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_Cue_Sheets (I
highly suggest the HAKB for CD-DA dumping information)

Please don't use ISO for preservation - it won't capture multi-track
discs properly, and CD-DA not at all. BIN/CUE is typically
recommended, as it will give a bit-level dump and divide according to
track differences.

--Alex