The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation, en... more The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation, ensuring our members can deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services. It is a not-forprofit membership organization whose primary objective is to raise awareness of the importance of the preservation of digital material and the attendant strategic, cultural and technological issues. It supports its members through knowledge exchange, capacity building, assurance, advocacy and partnership. The DPC's vision is to make our digital memory accessible tomorrow. The DPC Technology Watch Reports identify, delineate, monitor, and address topics that have a major bearing on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow. They provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with ensuring a robust digital memory, and they are of general interest to a wide and international audience with interests in computing, information management, collections management and technology. The reports are commissioned after consultation among DPC members about shared priorities and challenges; they are commissioned from experts; and they are thoroughly scrutinized by peers before being released. The authors are asked to provide reports that are informed, current, concise and balanced; that lower the barriers to participation in digital preservation; and that they are of wide utility. The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the dissemination of good practice in digital preservation. This report was written by Aliza Leventhal, Head of the Technical Services Section of the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress, and Jody Thompson, Head of the Archives, Special Collections and Digital Curation department for Georgia Institute of Technology. The report is published by the DPC in association with the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Thanks to the DPC editorial board and peer reviewers, with special thanks to Alexandra Jokinen.
Introduction The Science Fiction Collection1 at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech... more Introduction The Science Fiction Collection1 at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is a major component of the instruction, research, and outreach events involving the archives, the library, campus, and local communities. Collaborative efforts between archivists and librarians have stimulated growth of the physical and digital archival and circulating science fiction collections and have helped bridge the divide between a largely science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) focused campus and the humanities. Sherri Brown, former subject librarian for the School of Literature, Media and Communication (LMC), and Jody Thompson, head of archives, are two of the key players in the growth, outreach, instruction, and use of the collection. This case study highlights how this collection has been collaboratively cultivated and how it works as an essential resource in meeting the teaching, research, and learning goals of the library and the archives.
The Georgia Tech Archives has been busy testing and implementing the Archivists' Toolkit, an open... more The Georgia Tech Archives has been busy testing and implementing the Archivists' Toolkit, an open source application that supports management and description of archival collections. The Toolkit, according to official website at http://www.archiviststoolkit.org, is "the first open source archival data management system to provide integrated support for accessioning, description, donor tracking, name and subject authority work, and location management for archival materials." The Archivists' Toolkit is funded by a Mellon Foundation grant and was designed and created by a team of programmers and archivists from the University of California San Diego Libraries, New York University Libraries, and the Five Colleges Libraries. The project was developed and implemented in 2004 and was ready for beta testing in the summer of 2006. Nineteen institutions, including Harvard University, the Brooklyn Museum, Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands, and Georgia Tech participated in the beta testing in the summer of 2006. During the testing, the institutions were given weekly assignments. Participants were asked to test all functions of the application, such as the creation of accession records with names and subjects, and the ingest and export of Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Their input helped shape the Toolkit into a refined tool for managing archives, developed by and for archivists. The community of institutions using, testing, and designing the Toolkit has grown by leaps and bounds since the initial beta testing, and has developed into a valuable resource for technical support. The Toolkit design team impressively responds in a timely manner to all questions and comments submitted to the Archivists' Toolkit User Group's listserv.
A common obstacle during the appraisal of design records is the specialized vernacular creators u... more A common obstacle during the appraisal of design records is the specialized vernacular creators use to describe them. As a result, archival professionals may feel unprepared for discussions with potential donors while acquiring these distinct and sometimes problematic materials. Using authoritative architectural and archival sources, the authors expanded on existing literature to develop appraisal grid templates that generally align with different collecting institutions' missions and overarching development and retention policies and created a consolidated and comprehensive glossary of design phases, categories, and definitions to use as a reference. The authors hope that this resource will assist those who are unfamiliar with the design process to interpret disparate design record types, to inform the appraisal process, and ultimately, to make accessioning decisions.
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Papers by Jody Thompson