Files, metadata, and workflows: Putting the pieces together

For archivists working in contemporary collecting institutions, basic digital skills are essential. As technology makes it easier to create audio and video files, and archivists continue digitizing analog collections, the impact of digital content on our work only increases. For archives, there is a heightened risk of loss or inability to access this content if regular skills for ingest, management, and preservation are not acquired as part of the archivist’s toolkit.
 
This tutorial will offer attendees in-depth demonstrations of essential skills for working with digital collections at the basic level of protecting the bits, automating/extracting metadata, and preparing for the next steps of building and managing digital collections. More specifically, the tutorial will provide demonstrations on the use of free tools for working with files and metadata (both GUI and CLI), including Exiftool, ffprobe, MediaConch/MediaInfo, MDQC, BagIt, and Fixity that support identification, transfer, storage, metadata generation, and monitoring of digital collections. To put these tools into context, the tutorial is structured as a basic workflow and attendees will see how tools are combined in simple scripts to minimize effort and maximize automation. Participants will come away with a clear knowledge of how to use these tools and skills, what role they play in collection management workflows, and a sense of how to implement their use.