| One line summary | History of individual files and how they relate to others within the wider collection |
| Detailed description | For paper records, appraisal is a well-understood and essential process for assessing archival collections. For digital files, which might be found on hard drives and a variety of media, and in a range of file formats, this task becomes more difficult and there is a need for simple assessment tools to extract useful information that can be used by archivists for appraisal of digital collections. The key information required by the appraisers has been defined as: Checksum File name File type File path Modified date Ordering by date to identify creation trends Indexing of text file content Multiple tools may be needed to provide this set of information and this is time consuming when resources are limited. Currently identified tools are often too complex, proprietory or require use of command line which many staff do not have confidence in using The output of this tool should be in a user-friendly format such as csv that can then be imported into excel and manipulated further by both archivists or researchers A simple tool which can provide this information or call other tools will give archivists the context they need to make the initial appraisal of whether to accept the collection. The output can then also be delivered as a finding aid for researchers and will provide the basis of the Summary Guide which will be displayed within the archives catalogue |
| Issue champion | Lindsay Ould |
| Possible approaches | Manifest of the collection of files, checksums, get basic info (dates, format, length), DROID or the file utility for the formats. Use doc2x etc. (http://b2xtranslator.sourceforge.net  ) to transform the older format documents to the new OOXML formats |
| Context | Guidance will need to be provided to the users giving them information about the file properties and how user actions may change them This will give them confidence in analysing the results Limited investigation may also address trust issues with donors as the intial investigation can be done quickly and a decision made about accepting or rejecting the collection. Once a decision is made about the archival value, then a second stage of investigation can be planned if necessary |
| AQuA Solutions | Characterising externally generated content |
| Collections | Externally Generated Content |
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