The AIMS project has released their white paper, which has some great reading on the issues and challenges facing institutions as they embrace the avalanch of born digital content. From the e-mail release:
AIMS (Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship) was a two year grant generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It ran from October 2009-September 2011. An international collaboration of partners from the University of Hull (UK), Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Virginia as lead, AIMS had several main goals, among them:
1. Develop a methodology for the support and stewardship of born-digital materials
2. Foster and enhance the digital archivist community
3. Process over a dozen collections that had born digital content.
4. Create and disseminate a white paper that outlines our findings and work
To that end, I am pleased to announce the successful conclusion of both the grant and the white paper. The white paper is an expression of our methodology for supporting and stewarding born digital materials. The participants used their experience in processing collections with born digital content as the groundwork for our shared (rather than singular) approach. As such, it highlights decision points and practice. It is meant to introduce and expose readers to the issues of born digital stewardship, not necessarily solve every possible contingency since this is an evolving challenge for us all. We have articulated practices that are informed by archival principles that we hope will have a broad reach to our readers.
This document should be considered as a framework to guide good practice in terms of archival tasks and objectives necessary for success.
The AIMS white paper can be found here:
http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/
