DLF Born-Digital Access Working Group
About
The DLF Born-Digital Access Working Group, formed in 2017, produces research on and advances the practice of providing access to born-digital collections. Current activities center on researching born-digital access practices, determining levels of access for born-digital materials, and hosting archivist bootcamps to share ideas and tools for providing access to born-digital materials.
While our primary focus is currently on participatory archival research & development, we are intentionally situated under the Digital Library Federation to connect across disciplinary silos. We welcome any librarians or other types of workers who are concerned with providing access to born-digital data of any age into our community and projects.
Goals/Objectives
- Create a community of practice and engagement around issues related to born-digital access
Leadership
- Tori Maches, co-coordinator (2023)
- Nicole Scalessa, co-coordinator (2023)
- Steven Gentry, Visioning Access Systems subgroup lead
Subcommittees
Current:
- Visioning Access Systems: this subgroup developed, maintains, and enhances a community-influenced framework that supports information professionals who work with born-digital archival materials by guiding them as they design, select, or implement tools, platforms, and systems that facilitate access to born-digital content. It also pursues related topics and projects, such as the intersection of access to born-digital content and artificial intelligence.
Steven Gentry, subgroup lead, gentrysteven0208@gmail.com
Resources: Visioning Access Systems
- Legal Due Diligence: The Legal Due Diligence subcommittee was established in 2020 to assess issues around privacy, copyright, and other legal risks related to providing access to born-digital archival records, and to share this assessment in a centralized place. As a result of this group's collaborative research effort “The Legal and Ethical Considerations for Born-Digital Access” was published in June of 2022. This subcommittee is now being reestablished in 2024 for the purpose of updating this document to include considerations related to AI.
Shelley Barba, subgroup co-lead
Jessica Breiman, subgroup co-lead
Resources: Legal and Ethical Considerations for Born-Digital Access (2022-06-17)
Recent Past:
- Born-Digital Description in Finding Aids: this subgroup explored how description of born digital archival materials is actually being implemented in finding aids to facilitate access. With input from many contributors, the group compiled a corpus of categorized examples of description as a resource for practitioners.
Brenna Edwards, co-lead
Lara Friedman-Shedlov, co-lead
Born-Digital Description in Finding Aids (2022-03-03)
Get Involved
Meetings
BDAWG meets monthly on the first Tuesday of each month. Check the BDAWG Google Group, Slack, and the DLF Community Calendar for the most up-to-date meeting information.
