The course blog for Digital History Methods a graduate seminar at American University. One of the explicit goals of this course is for us to develop as communicators on the public web. So please do join our conversation, but please do so respectfully. We are all learning how to do this together.
Hi Alice,
I think it’s a good idea to of course focus this policy on the video content as it is the bulk of the materials, but I really like that you created a standard to come back and review this policy to address any new types of content that could be added. I also liked it that you said some items with more descriptive metadata will be expedited for digitization, but not necessarily given preference to other items, particularly the at risk collections. It’s important to digitize items, and some may be easier than others, but that the fact that it’s easier shouldn’t necessarily drive the order of digitization. Great work on this!
Sarah
Thanks for bringing up a point I never addressed with my client: “hard-drives should be replaced regularly, in accordance with manufacturer suggested lifespans for the equipment.” I wonder about the logistics of this. For example, my client has over 20 hard-drives floating around for purposeful redundancies in back-ups. Maybe they could be numbered and added to an inventory with dates purchased and the dates that they should be taken out of circulation? I wonder if there is some sort of “best practices” for this type of thing.
Hi Alice,
I think something you handled really well with this policy is managing the variety of groups supporting the Maryland Public Television collection. Having different departments or even different organizations collaborating on a project can be unwieldy, but I think you have done a good job outlining who and how different responsibilities should be handled.
–Ben