The BitCurator team is pleased to announce the availability of From Code to Community: Building and Sustaining BitCurator through Community Engagement. This white paper summarizes the activities undertaken during the second phase of the BitCurator project, which ran from October 1, 2013 to September 29, 2014. It describes efforts taken to develop and support an open-source software project through the cultivation of the BitCurator user community.
New case study in latest issue of IJDC!
The latest issue of International Journal of Digital Curation (IJDC) features a paper written by Sam Meister, Digital Archivist at the University of Montana and Alexandra Chassanoff, BitCurator Project Manager and doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Using a case study approach, the article explores how BitCurator can support digital curation activities in archival workflows.
Integrating Digital Forensics Techniques into Curatorial Tasks: A Case Study
Announcement: BitCurator Access!
Press Release (pdf)
Release date:
October 21, 2014
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant Supports Improving Access to Born-Digital Collections for Collecting Institutions
CHAPEL HILL – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) has received a grant for $750,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project that focuses on simplifying and improving access to the contents of disk images in born-digital collections for use by libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs).
The BitCurator Access project will develop open-source software that supports the provision of access to disk images through three exploratory approaches: (1) building tools to support web-based services, (2) enabling the export of file systems and associated metadata, (3) and the use of emulation environments. Also closely associated with these access goals is redaction. BitCurator Access will develop tools to redact files, file system metadata, and targeted bitstreams within disks or directories.
BitCurator Access builds on previous work of the BitCurator project, a three year, collaborative effort between SILS and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. The project developed, packaged, and documented open source digital forensics tools to allow LAMS to advance many core digital curation goals, including: creation of authentic copies of data on disks; reflection of the original order of materials; establishment of more trustworthy chains of custody; discovery and exposure of associated contextual information; and identification of sensitive information that should be filtered, redacted or masked in appropriate ways.
“Many LAMs within the US and internationally are using these tools and methods to generate disk images, extract metadata to support ongoing preservation tasks, and store the resulting data in dedicated servers or shared network spaces,” said Dr. Christopher (Cal) Lee, principal investigator of the BitCurator Access project. “However, there is currently very limited support for provision of access to the contents of the disk images or associated metadata.”
Kam Woods, Research Scientist at SILS, will be the Co-Principle Investigator and Technical Lead for the BitCurator Access project. Sunitha Misra, a recent graduate of SILS’ MSIS program, will serve as software developer. Alexandra Chassanoff, a SILS doctoral candidate, will serve as the Project Manager. An advisory group of external partners with significant relevant experience will provide guidance and expertise.
For more information about the project, please visit the main BitCurator web site at: bitcurator.net and follow @bitcurator on Twitter.
Using BitCurator to investigate literary archives
Curious about how scholars might use BitCurator to investigate and analyze born-digital materials in literary archives? In this post, Jeremy Leighton John, curator at the British Library, describes using the BitCurator environment to dig deeper into the born-digital archives of author Hanif Kureishi.
We’ll continue to profile real-world use cases on in upcoming blog posts – if you’d like to contribute a guest post on how you have used BitCurator, please contact us!
BitCurator 1.0 Release!
The BitCurator team is pleased to announce the 1.0 release of the BitCurator environment, now available for download on our release portal or by following the direct links below:
The BitCurator 1.0.0 Virtual Machine – 2.6GB
The BitCurator 1.0.0 Installation ISO – 2.3GB
BitCurator 1.0 is the culmination of three years of work by our team to provide professionals working in collecting institutions with an integrated environment of open source digital forensics tools geared towards their specific needs. The BitCurator team has approached this challenge by developing new software to assist with born-digital media processing, and by curating a collection of mature, reliable third-party software projects and libraries into a single, well documented system.
As with previous releases, 1.0 is distributed as a VirtualBox virtual machine disk image and as a bootable (“Live”) ISO image. The BitCurator virtual machine can be run on any 64-bit operating system capable of running VirtualBox, including Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac OS X 10.7+, and most modern Linux distributions. If you would prefer to create your own virtual machine, the BitCurator ISO image can be used as an installation source. The BitCurator ISO may also be used to install BitCurator on a dedicated host.
BitCurator is unique among the digital forensics oriented Linux distributions available today, not only because of the focus on the needs of libraries, archives, and museums, but because of the care that has been taken to ensure the functionality, relevance, and completeness of each tool within the environment. Updated information on these tools can always be found in the Tools in the BitCurator Environment section of the BitCurator Environment wiki.
Of particular note: the 1.0 release introduces an improved version of the BitCurator Disk Image Access tool, a GUI interface allowing you to browse the contents (both regular and deleted/unallocated files) of raw and forensically packaged disk images. The updated tool includes stability and performance enhancements when working with FAT, NTFS, and HFS+ volumes, including better handling of multi-volume disk images and real-time feedback on file export actions.
Our Quickstart guide to help you get started working with the environment can be found on the wiki, in the Documentation folder on the BitCurator environment desktop, or by following this direct link. As with previous releases, the BitCurator environment is built using a customized version of Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit). For best performance, we recommend a host machine with an Intel Core i5 (or equivalent) and at least 8GB of RAM.
Many of you have been following our progress on the user forum for a couple of years now. In just the past 12 months, we have had 30 official releases, introduced three new GUI-based tools, and conducted dozens of training workshops both in the US and internationally. We’re committed to ensuring the ongoing development of BitCurator to meet the needs of the community. To this end, we’ve created the BitCurator Consortium (BCC), an independent, community-led membership association that will serve as the administrative, development, and community support center for the BitCurator environment.
Details on how to join can be found on our BitCurator Consortium Membership page. Institutional membership costs are modest; membership confers voting rights, prioritizes enhancement requests, and offers discounts to future BCC events. Charter memberships are available through December 2014, and general membership enrollment is open.