Site link: go.osu.edu/LIB-DAD

Introduction

The Dark Archive Deaccessioning Project is the successor project to the Master Objects Migration Project, which for various reasons never saw completion. The sFTP server that is known as the “Dark Archive” is being sunsetted and decommissioned at the end of CY2023. As such, University Libraries is taking this opportunity to make final disposition decisions regarding content within the Dark Archive. There are three potential decisions:

• Migrate to the Digital Collections: Items that will receive item level description, and meet digitization standards or with documented exception.

• Migrate to Gray Digital Preservation Repository: Knowledge Bank preservation files, born digital collections and digitized collections with rights issues, temporal restrictions or other ad-hoc permissible exceptions.

• Disposal: Items that cannot be attributed to a particular collection, inferior digitization quality or no clear University ownership or rights.

All disposition decisions need to be made prior to the end of the AY2023-2024 (June 30, 2024). These decisions will allow for theorderly and prioritized process of getting these digital objects to their destination.

Stakeholders

Microsoft Teams

• LIB DarkArchive File Review Team: Workspace for curatorial and digital preservation review of files

• LIB Digital Preservation>DarKive Channel: The initial analysis and documentation channel

Process

Initially, the plan was to to have gross decisions made by curatorial staff as to disposition prior to the end of the CY2023, and have the content staged on the K-drive for eventual processing into Digital Collections, or into a dedicated Team for eventual ingest into the Gray Repo. The first step in the process was to generate data regarding the number of files and their sizes per folder within the Dark Archive. The data was then collated and analyzed within Excel spreadsheets to determine the scope of the project and allow a first pass of curatorial review. Digital Preservation cross-referenced this data to prior analyses, and discovered discrepancies in the data reported. However, it became evident that the data retrieved might not be the whole picture, and after meeting with curatorial stakeholders they need an effective way to test view the content to help them make decisions.

Therefore, the LIB DarkArchive File Review has been created to migrate all of the Dark Archive. This will allow Digital Preservation to run DROID and create detailed manifests for curatorial review, as well as allow the curators a read only view of the files to assist them with their decision-making process.