NC State University Joins the BitCurator Consortium

BitCurator is well-known for its packaged environment of open-source digital forensics tools, used by archives and libraries worldwide to process and preserve digital content. Although the SCRC Digital Program staff don’t currently utilize the BitCurator environment for our born-digital processing workflows, the work we do is very much informed by the BitCurator toolset; we use many of the same programs and processes in our workflows.

But beyond the tools developed by the BitCurator project, the BitCurator Consortium is a community of more than forty institutions dedicated to “supporting digital forensics practices in libraries, archives, and museums in order to help ensure the longevity and reliability of the cultural, scientific, and historical record. . . Membership is open to libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions worldwide that seek a collaborative community within which they may explore and apply forensics approaches and solutions to their digital collections.”

At the Special Collections Research Center, we are very excited to have recently joined the BitCurator Consortium. Membership allows us use of the BitCurator Consortium help desk, access to an evolving library of workflows, documentation, and scripts, a voice in feature development and community governance, one-on-one consultations to further develop our program, and professional development and training opportunities, among other features. Already our digital program has benefited from the expertise of the Consortium; we have met with Alex Chassanoff, Research Program Officer at Educopia - who administers the BitCurator Consortium - in order to document and further refine our born-digital workflows.

Additionally, Brian Dietz, Digital Program Librarian for Special Collections, was recently elected to the Executive Council for the upcoming year. The Council provides top-level leadership on critical decisions, formalizes documentation, and ensures ongoing programmatic success. We look forward to the many ways that the Special Collections Research Center will benefit from this collaboration.