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Introductions from the AIMS Symposium Google Group, brought here so it is all in one place. 

Courtney Mumma

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I'm Tom Laudeman with the University of Virginia Library, and I'm the AIMS programmer. I have created Rubymatica, the SIP creation tool modeled closely on the SIP creation work done by the Archivematica 
team Archivematica  team (with many thanks to them). Rubymatica is written in Ruby on Rails. It is loosely integrated with a donor survey tool (adapted from a package I wrote a couple of years ago) and with the Tufts TAPER Submission Agreement Builder Tool. The entire suite is web-based, and will soon be available for public testing on a UVA-hosted server. Rubymatica is slated be the SIP creation/ingest module of the upcoming Hypatia arrangement and description tool. 

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I look forward to welcoming everyone to Charlottesville! 

Tom Laudeman
twl8n@virginia.edu
AIMS Programmer

Matthew Stephens

My name is Matthew Stephens, and I'm the Sustaining Digital Scholarship programmer at the University of Virginia Library.  I've been involved preservation and migration of digital assets, primarily electronic texts, but also websites and digital image collections. I've done a lot of work in metadata conversion and manipulation, as well as digital object repository management.  I'm interested in most aspects of digital preservation and curation, but these days forensics and provenance are foremost on my mind. 

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In terms of collections, we have digital archives from a number of individuals and organisations. Just over a TB now, and growing all the time... Some collections have a handful of files, while others include thousands. We're doing quite a bit of work at the moment to capture our legacy digital holdings, and we have new digital accessions coming in too. We've processed a handful of 'hybrid archives' and are working on our UI for presenting digital archives with finding aids to researchers. 
Looking forward to the coming discussions! 

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I look forward to seeing you all in AprilMay. 

Seth Shaw 
Electronic Records Archivist 
Duke University Archives 

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My areas of interest concerning born-digital archives have to do with the way in which personal digital archives are currently being created and maintained in both more traditional desktop environments and in dispersed cloud computing, the web, and portable devices.  In order to break open some of these questions and get fresh perspective, I've hosted I’ve hosted two dialogues in the SISPA group: one with Cathy Marshall of Microsoft and one with Susan Thomas of the Bodleian (about the PARADIGM project--looking forward to meeting you Susan!).  Last year, I led the Institute on Personal Archives through the ACA and we hosted Laura Carroll who spoke about Emory's Emory’s Salman Rushdie Digital Archives Project.

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Looking forward to participating in the symposium with you...you….

Catherine

Simon Wilson

I'm I’m Simon Wilson, digital archivist at Hull University Archives as part of the AIMS project. I have worked at Hull since November 2009 when my main task was to prepare the collections for a move into the new Hull History Centre - a new award winning building that provides a single point of access for the collections of the Hull City Archives, Hull Local Studies Library and the Hull University Archives. The building opened in January 2010 and has already welcomed over 52,000 visitors.

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I am looking forward to discussing a wide range of issues with fellow delegates including those who have experience of providing access to born-digital material and those who have tackled email.

I am just putting the finishing touches to a wiki for the symposium event and I will send an email about this on Wednesday.
Simon Wilson
Digital Archivist (AIMS Project)
Hull History Centre

Alison Hinderliter

I'm Alison Hinderliter, Manuscripts and Archives Librarian at the Newberry Library, Chicago. I was very fortunate to have attended Matt Kirschenbaum and Naomi Nelson's Rare Book School class last summer on Born Digital Materials, and after that class I was able to go back to the Newberry and begin relevant conversations with materials donors, researchers, and staff. I am very interested in the full package of digital materials curation, from outreach and accessioning through appraisal, processing, description, and delivery. Most of this archival workflow is still in the theoretical stages at my institution, due to staff and budget restraints - my experience has been with the donor relations and appraisal part of the large puzzle thus far. I know that collaboration with other institutions will be key to the Newberry's flourishing on the digital curation front.  As an aside, having a music background, I am also very interested in preservation of born-digital music-related materials, including recorded sound and musical notation software preservation.

I am very honored to be a part of this important symposium and I hope to be able to contribute something useful in terms of best practices for donor relations / interviews, accessioning, and appraisal.  At the end of this month I am attending the Midwest Archives Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, where there will be several sessions on different aspects of managing digital collections. I will be glad to share what I learn there with this group. Furthermore, I'm attending the DigCCurr symposium in Chapel Hill immediately following this symposium.... anyone else?
http://www.midwestarchives.org/assets/documents/2011_annual_program_low_res.pdf
http://www.ils.unc.edu/digccurr/institute.html

Erika Farr

Greetings, All.
My name is Erika Farr and I am the coordinator for digital archives at Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. Our acquisition of Salman Rushdie's personal papers included 4 personal computers and an external hard drive containing a file dump from the machine he was using at the time and it pretty much launched our born-digital archives program. In some ways, the Rushdie archive has been the proverbial tail wagging the dog and we are working toward establishing a sustainable program for acquiring, appraising, processing, preserving, and providing access to our born-digital and hybrid archival collections. We now have numerous "papers" with significant born-digital components (including complete computing environments) as well as four more sets of Rushdie data, so we are anxious to get a more efficient and effective set of processes and practices in place.

We have made some progress with infrastructure (fedora-based repository) and are now in the process of establishing a digital analysis lab. Because we have users interacting with one born-digital collection with some regularity, I am also trying to monitor user experience and user feedback. While the whole field of born-digital archives fascinates me, I am particularly interested in the user experience, how we provide access, and how shifts in archival media may (or may not) impact research methodologies.

As for my background, I am not an archivist and just barely a librarian, completing my MLIS in August 2010. I started working in libraries while getting my PhD in English lit at Emory and have worked with a range of digital library and digital scholarship projects. I was lucky enough to work with Matt and Gabby on the NEH ODH start up grant that Matt mentioned and have enjoyed getting to know some of the fascinating people working in digital archives through events such as
iPres and Digital Lives symposia.

I am looking forward to this gathering and learning from all of you.

Warm wishes,
Erika

Ben Goldman

Hello, everyone.

My name is Ben Goldman, and I am the digital archivist at the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center (AHC). Things develop very gradually here in Wyoming, whether you're referring to economic development, enlightened political thought, born-digital archives, or just my responsiveness to this Symposium's call for introductions.

The AHC has only recently begun to engage the issue of born-digital archives. We have been slowly developing a program that is greatly influenced by the work of many attending the AIMS Symposium, but is constrained by a lack of technical infrastructure and limited financial and human resources (1/5 of my time is 'officially' allotted for born-digital issues). I think these circumstances are pretty common for most academic manuscript repositories and so I've enjoyed the challenge of developing a program that tries to capture the field's nascent best practices in spirit, if not truly in practice, and sharing our lessons learned with other resource-challenged institutions.

Right now we are focused on working through our backlog of digital media in collections and transferring data from media to file server, while capturing descriptive metadata, checksums, file formats, etc. It's rudimentary at best. We're also using the experience of working through a large, complex, hybrid congressional collection (300 cu. + 350 Gb) to help formulate policies and procedures.

My interest in this topic has really grown out of my passion for archives. Like many of you, I am interested in exploring born-digital issues from the perspective of common archival administrative areas. I would classify much of my work so far as being focused on accessioning, though I am very interested in appraisal and processing issues. I am already experiencing some tension between our minimal processing philosophy (which pervades much of the profession) and the complexity of born-digital collections.

Looking forward to meeting you all.

Best,

Ben

Erin O'Meara

My name is Erin O’Meara and I’m the Electronic Records Archivist and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Here at UNC, I’m developing workflows and procedures for the various collecting units in Wilson Special Collections regarding born-digital materials. I’m also the front-facing library staff member for services regarding the Carolina Digital Repository, a preservation-focused IR that uses Fedora and iRODS as its core technological infrastructure. I’m helping to develop the Curator’s Workbench, an open-source ingest workflow tool for digital content.

A bit of background: I got my Master of Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2004. While I was in Vancouver I worked as a graduate assistant on the InterPARES 2 Project mostly with Richard Pearce-Moses and the Science Focus Group. My case study focused on the preservation of archaeological records within Geographic Information Systems. Before coming to UNC, I was the Electronic Records Archivist at the University of Oregon.

My main interests are in operationalizing a strong born-digital workflow in a working archives/special collections that has linkages to archival theory.

Michael Forstrom

My name is Michael Forstrom, and I'm an archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale. At Beinecke I spend a good part of my time processing and cataloging modern literary manuscript material, but I'm also responsible for managing the work around born-digital material in collections. I'm part of the Yale AIMS team, along with Mark Matienzo and others, and in addition to AIMS-related work, over roughly the past 18 months my efforts have been focused on establishing a digital preservation workbench here at Yale, standardizing workflows with colleagues in Manuscripts & Archives, and developing Beinecke's curatorial services and documentation.     

Looking forward to next week,

Michael Forstrom

Catherine Stollar Peters

Hello, everyone. My name is Catherine Stollar Peters and I am a PhD student at the University at Albany in their Informatics Department. My current research interest is examining the data creation, maintenance, sharing, use, and preservation of large electronic data sets by museum scientists. I am trying to determine if the models archivists have created in terms of data curation really match up with what scientists really do.  Some recent findings that I would like to talk about at the symposium are social factors that play a role in data curation. 

Professional background: Before starting on my PhD, I worked for the New York State Archives in their Information Services Unit. In that position I did a lot of systems development work and participated in their efforts to create a state preservation system (through conducting technical appraisals and fine tuning requirements for a digital repository.) Prior to working at the State Archives, I was an electronic records archivist at the Harry Ransom Center.  I contributed to their early efforts in developing procedures and workflows for their digital preservation program.  

I am looking forward to see you all in Virginia!

Ricc Ferrante

Hi, I’m Ricc Ferrante, the Smithsonian Institution Archives’ Information Technology Archivist and director of Digital Services. Digital Services here includes our digital preservation and curation, digitization, electronic records management  and our web-based outreach activities. My primary focus since joining the Archives has been to tackle the preservation and curation of our more “thorny” formats and born digital objects, including email accounts, websites and social media. We have also been doing a lot in the area of digital video, DAT tapes and computer-aided design documents – some solutions but also a number of painfully discovered dead-ends.  Standards and best practices are near and dear to my heart, so I’m grateful to participate in the video and technical metadata part of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative effort and, previously, in the work to define the Audit and Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories standard (CCSDS 652.0 / ISO 16363) that is currently open for public comment. I also enjoy hosting internships as a way to invest in the future curation and preservation successes of archives a few generations down the road.

Bradley Daigle

Greetings, everyone. I am Bradley Daigle, Director of Digital Curation Services and Digital Strategist for Special Collections. I am also PI on The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's funded project: Born Digital Materials: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship (AIMS) along with Martha Sites. I have worked at UVa for over 10 year and in varying capacities. Currently, I am responsible for the life-cycle of the digital object here at UVa Library. That means from digitization to repository environment to collections strategy to digital preservation (stewardship). I directly oversee digitization and stewardship but am largely responsible for the functional requirements for said content in our managed environments. I also do a great deal of work with intellectual property and reuse of our digital assets. My area will be working very closely with Special Collections with respect to born digital materials.

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