Digital Collection Project Best Practices

This document illustrates specific file formats recommended for digital reproduction files for the long-term preservation, which are produced from still image, text, audio, and video. It also specifies server locations where the files be saved.

Preservation master files must be stored on a designated server with operational recovery, maintained, discoverable, and accessible. Dropbox has been chosen as one of server locations for preservation based on the recommendations from the Campus IT Department. Although it may be ideal to save another set of preservation master files for audio and video on the department shared drive in addition to Dropbox, Dropbox has been identified as the designated server location due to resource limitations. 

Access derivatives are the files which have been uploaded to the digital asset management (DAM) system and available for the public use. Although those files are not copies of the preservation master files, they are maintained: They are repurposed when an image file is requested in TIFF, when the digital collections are shared and made available on other platforms, and/or when the current DAM system is upgraded or replaced with other products. 

Public use files are also access derivatives produced in lower resolutions and intended to provide access to born-digital materials and digital surrogates donated by donors. The files are saved on Dropbox to provide access in viewer mode during the limited time and maintained as a set of back-up files.