SPEC Kit 329: Managing Born-Digital Special Collections and Archival Materials · 37
We do not currently outsource the retrieval of born-digital materials from legacy media nor do we actively plan to,
however, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of doing so.
While we do not currently outsource the process of retrieving the data from legacy media, we have utilized this strategy
in the past.
Ethical/Appraisal IssSues
11. Below are ethical/appraisal issues that may be encountered while managing born-digital materials.
Please indicate which of these issues are addressed by your library’s ingest policies or procedures.
Check all that apply. N=42
Whether to retain (under restriction) or destroy personally identifiable information (PII) 30 71%
Whether to preserve e-books, software, digital music, and other copyrighted content 20 48%
Whether to make files available for research use without having screened them for PII on the file level 18 43%
Whether to retain or destroy file fragments and deleted content in the absence of explicit guidance in
the donor agreement
15 36%
Whether to preserve log files, preferences, browser caches and other types of ambient data in the
absence of explicit guidance in the donor agreement
5 12%
Other issue 16 38%
Please describe the other issue. N=16
PII and Restricted Data
All special collections materials have personally identifiable information (PII). This may be different than sensitive
information, which may be protected when PII cannot be.
Personal email, bills, contents of individual artists that we encountered.
Some records held by the Medical Center Archives contain Protected Health Information (PHI) and are covered under the
HIPAA Privacy Rule.
There is an institute PII policy, but to my knowledge not a more formally written policy to specifically addresses
managing archival materials.
We have policies that deal with copyrighted material regardless of medium and we have institutional policies that deal
with PII and restricted data, but nothing that specifically applies to the collection of digital materials within the libraries.
While we have policies on privacy, we will need to develop more granular procedures for dealing with born-digital
records that are in alignment with those policies.
We do not currently outsource the retrieval of born-digital materials from legacy media nor do we actively plan to,
however, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of doing so.
While we do not currently outsource the process of retrieving the data from legacy media, we have utilized this strategy
in the past.
Ethical/Appraisal IssSues
11. Below are ethical/appraisal issues that may be encountered while managing born-digital materials.
Please indicate which of these issues are addressed by your library’s ingest policies or procedures.
Check all that apply. N=42
Whether to retain (under restriction) or destroy personally identifiable information (PII) 30 71%
Whether to preserve e-books, software, digital music, and other copyrighted content 20 48%
Whether to make files available for research use without having screened them for PII on the file level 18 43%
Whether to retain or destroy file fragments and deleted content in the absence of explicit guidance in
the donor agreement
15 36%
Whether to preserve log files, preferences, browser caches and other types of ambient data in the
absence of explicit guidance in the donor agreement
5 12%
Other issue 16 38%
Please describe the other issue. N=16
PII and Restricted Data
All special collections materials have personally identifiable information (PII). This may be different than sensitive
information, which may be protected when PII cannot be.
Personal email, bills, contents of individual artists that we encountered.
Some records held by the Medical Center Archives contain Protected Health Information (PHI) and are covered under the
HIPAA Privacy Rule.
There is an institute PII policy, but to my knowledge not a more formally written policy to specifically addresses
managing archival materials.
We have policies that deal with copyrighted material regardless of medium and we have institutional policies that deal
with PII and restricted data, but nothing that specifically applies to the collection of digital materials within the libraries.
While we have policies on privacy, we will need to develop more granular procedures for dealing with born-digital
records that are in alignment with those policies.
