Mark A. Matienzo
AIMS (Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for
Stewardship) was a two year grant generously funded by The Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation. It ran from October 2009-September 2011. An
international collaboration of partners from the University of Hull
(UK), Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of
Virginia as lead, AIMS had several main goals, among them:
1. Develop a methodology for the support and stewardship of
born-digital materials
2. Foster and enhance the digital archivist community
3. Process over a dozen collections that had born digital content.
4. Create and disseminate a white paper that outlines our findings and work
To that end, I am pleased to announce the successful conclusion of
both the grant and the white paper. The white paper is an expression
of our methodology for supporting and stewarding born digital
materials. The participants used their experience in processing
collections with born digital content as the groundwork for our shared
(rather than singular) approach. As such, it highlights decision
points and practice. It is meant to introduce and expose readers to
the issues of born digital stewardship, not necessarily solve every
possible contingency since this is an evolving challenge for us all.
We have articulated practices that are informed by archival principles
that we hope will have a broad reach to our readers. This document
should be considered as a framework to guide good practice in terms of
archival tasks and objectives necessary for success.
The AIMS white paper can be found here:
http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/
Please forward this email on to interested colleagues and send us your
feedback.
You can either contact me directly or leave a comment on our AIMS
blog: http://born-digital-archives.blogspot.com/
Mark A. Matienzo
Digital Archivist, Manuscripts and Archives. Yale University Library
Technical Architect, ArchivesSpace