Program + registration available for the BitCurator Users Forum 2016

We are pleased to announce the preliminary program is now available for the BitCurator Users Forum 2016. The Forum takes place the day after CurateGear 2016.

Join BitCurator users from around the globe as we discuss how we are using the BitCurator software environment. Hosted by the BitCurator Consortium (BCC), this event will be grounded in the practical, real-world experiences of digital archivists and digital curation experts. Come prepared to discuss your current challenges, share emerging BitCurator integrations and workflows, and address the “now what” of handling your digital forensics outputs.

Date: 15 January 2016
Location: Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Registration
General Registration – $30
Student Registration – $15
BitCurator Consortium Member Registration – Free
Register here.

Program
8:00 – 8:30am Registration and Coffee
8:30 – 9:00am Welcome and Introductions
9:00 – 10:15am Panel: Beyond Floppy Disks
Cultural heritage institutions are collecting a larger variety of media than ever before including external hard drives, computers, and files from hosted cloud services. While there are established workflows and best practices for smaller media objects, many institutions are just now beginning to tackle these other forms of media.

This panel will be a forum to discuss how some institutions are ingesting files from various media types, including the utilization of new tools and the development of new policies and workflows.
10:15 – 10:45am Break
10:45 – 12:00pm Lightning Talks: Not Your Average BitCurator: How Repositories are Using BitCurator Tools in Different Ways
As institutions become exposed to alternative digital forensic tools and their individual strengths and limitations, they are exploring the benefits of expanding their digital curation toolset beyond reliance on any single product. Moreover, the modular architecture of tools like BitCurator has fostered a growing community of contributors who have developed and shared scripts and modifications to the open source code base.

In this lightning talk session, speakers will share how they are using BitCurator tools as part of their digital curation workflow and how they have expanded BitCurator tools to meet the needs of their institution. The session will also allow time for forum participants to ask questions and share their integration challenges and outcomes.
12:00 – 1:30pm Lunch
1:30 – 2:45pm Breakouts: Where Should Access Happen?
As processes for acquiring, analyzing, and describing electronic records stabilize, institutions invariably consider access to such materials. Where and how will researchers interact with digital archives? What tools should be available to them? What is the Web’s role in access?

In this breakout session, forum participants will divide into groups to discuss the decision points involved in providing access to born-digital archival materials. The session will begin with a quick brainstorm topics before breaking out. Discussion facilitators will have several topics in mind, but participants are encouraged to have their own discussion topics and provocative statements.
2:45 – 3:00 Break
3:00 – 4:00pm Panel: Integration with other systems
Acquisitions and processing workflows often end with a set of output files from various digital curation software tools, including both content and metadata. How does an electronic records program ensure that the output files can integrate with new or existing platforms for long term preservation? In this session, panelists will discuss their experience with different preservation and description systems, including both open source and licensed systems, and how they have approached integrating the output of their workflows into those systems.
4:00 – 4:30pm Wrap up and Future discussion

Accommodations
Please see the list of nearby hotels below.

The Carolina Inn 211 Pittsboro Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Tel 800.962.8519
(This is the closest option. It is on the UNC Campus, just a couple of blocks from Wilson Library.)

Hampton Inn & Suites Chapel Hill Carrboro/Downtown
370 East Main Street, Unit 100
Carrboro, North Carolina 27510
Tel 919.969.6988
(Walkable distance)

Holiday Inn Express Chapel Hill
6119 Farrington Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
Tel 919.489.7555

Aloft Chapel Hill
1001 South Hamilton Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
Tel 866.716.8143
(Shuttle buses available)

BitCurator Takes Vienna!

Cal and Kam just returned from teaching a one-day workshop at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Vienna, Austria! The workshop was sponsored by the Open Preservation Foundation, which seeks to promote best practices for the long-term preservation of digital cultural heritage materials.

During the workshop, participants were able to gain hands-on experience using BitCurator tools, including our latest developments with BitCurator Access. Participants were encouraged to bring disk images from their own collections, in an effort to present and discuss real-world use cases faced by institutions. The workshop focused on using the BitCurator environment to assist with various aspects of digital curation, including pre-imaging data triage; forensic disk imaging; file system analysis and reporting; identification of private and individually identifying information; and export of technical and other metadata. Workshop participants came from five different European countries: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

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BitCurator User Forum – Register now!

REMINDER:
The 1st Annual BitCurator User Forum will be held on Friday, January 9th at UNC Chapel Hill.
Registration is still open!

Join BitCurator users from around the globe for a hands-on day focused on current use and future development of the BitCurator digital software environment. Hosted by the BitCurator Consortium (BCC), this event will be grounded in the practical, boots-on-the-ground experiences of digital archivists and curators. Come wrestle with current challenges—engage in disc image format debates, investigate emerging BitCurator integrations and workflows, and discuss the “now what” of handling your digital forensics outputs.

General Registration – $30
Student Registration – $15
BitCurator Consortium Member Registration – Free

Take a sneak peak at the scheduled program.

Announcing the BitCurator Webinar Series

We are happy to announce the first in our BitCurator webinar series: An Introduction to the BitCurator Environment. This webinar will be the first in a monthly series of webinars addressing the use of Digital Forensics in the curation of born-digital materials. It will take place on Wednesday, November 20th from 10:00am – 11:00am EST and again from 2:oopm – 3:00pm EST. We will introduce participants to the basic functions of the BitCurator environment–from installation to generating forensics metadata reports. Specific topics covered will include:

  • Installing BitCurator as either a virtual machine or a stand-alone operating system
  • Learning to navigate within the BitCurator environment (BitCurator is a modified version of Ubuntu Linux)
  • Working with external media within BitCurator
  • Creating disk images via Guymager
  • Searching a disk image for personally identifiable information (PII)
  • An introduction to DFXML (Digital Forensics XML)
  • Generating the BitCurator reports

To attend this webinar, please register here in advance for the session you would like to attend by clicking on the appropriate link below.

Session One beginning at 10:00am EST

Session Two beginning at 2:00pm PST

We are limiting each webinar to 30 participants, so we encourage you to register early.  If you have any questions about the event, please contact Porter Olsen at polsen at umd dot edu.

 

 

OPF Hackathon

Do you have born-digital collections that you’re grappling with?  Old media with file-systems that you can’t read?  Concerns about disseminating your collections because they might contain sensitive information?  Have you created disk images but don’t yet have the ability to process that data on the images?

Or are you a developer who would like to tackle some real-world challenges that will directly benefit collecting institutions in caring for born-digital materials?  Are you adept at developing and applying open-source software and would like to learn through hands-on experience how to apply various open-source digital forensics tools to collections?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then we have an event for you!

The Open Planets Foundation and the University of Chapel Hill’s School of Library and Information Science proudly presents:

The OPF Hackathon at UNC Chapel Hill:
Tackling Real-World Collection Challenges with Digital Forensics Tools and Methods

Monday, June 3rd-Wednesday, June 5th
Registration cost: $150 (REDUCED!)
*includes 3 lunches and 2 dinners

Come join world renowned digital preservation experts, collection managers, and coders as we collectively hack through digital preservation problems using a variety of digital forensics methods and approaches.

Our expert facilitators will be available to provide hands on guidance.    We will also be presenting awards for best collection challenge and best technical solution!

This is the first OPF Hackathon taking place in the United States and we are thrilled to host you as we hack out solutions to common problems in born-digital collections.

Event information: http://bit.ly/Z09fls
Registration page: http://bit.ly/XK4zel