Automated Batch Archival Processing: Preserving Arnold Wesker's Digital Manuscripts

Many cultural institutions and archives expect to acquire an increasingly copious amount of born-digital materials that will need to be processed at the item level. However, limitations in technology, labor, and funding resources often hinder small and medium-sized cultural institutions in their efforts to adequately implement and maintain long-term preservation methods for their digital archival holdings. This paper is about the Arnold Wesker Digital Manuscripts preservation project. This project focused on developing an automated batch archival processing work flow that minimized the labor and time required when handling large electronic archival collections. By working with various software and digital tools, it was possible to take advantage of affordable and accessible technology to successfully process more than five thousand digital files with a limited amount of time and resources. It is hoped that this automated batch archival processing approach will encourage other cultural institutions to initiate dynamic preservation projects for their digital collections.