What is the most effective way of sorting large, unsorted electronic archive collections to enable cataloguing?

We have a number of large, unsorted electronic archive collections that have very little descriptive metadata. We have very little knowledge about the content of the collections and there is no original order. We would be interested in hearing recommendations for the best way of going about sorting collections to enable us to catalogue them to archival standards and make them accessible to users. Are there any tools we could use to help automate this work? We would also be interested in hearing people's experiences of cataloguing electronic archive collections using traditional standards - e.g ISAD(G)

Becky

• digital-preservation
• digital-collections
• cataloging
• digital-archiving

Comments

• Joe: Can you say anything about the source of the collection? Eg, how you'd deal with a dump from a random faculty member's computer is going to be different than how you might deal with a more homogeneous set that was collected for a specific purpose. (eg, a bunch of images; different types of media but all dealing with a given subject; etc.)

Answer by dsalo

Tools like the Duke Data Accessioner and Archivematica contain accessioning, visualization, deduping, and similar utilities useful for getting a handle on a large, confused, heterogeneous collection.

Comments