📖Ingesting digital media
Purpose of this guidance
This guidance is designed to aid virus checking, appraisal and ingest of digital materials to current collection development standards, and is in line with section "Post Transfer: Processing Digital Acquisitions" and "4.16 Virus Check (MAC)" within the 'Acquisition and Accessioning Manual'.
It supplements the existing guidance by ordering the process to better suit the inventory workflow and additional recording of appraisal decisions not covered by Collection Development guidance assuming removal of duplicates and out of scope material at point of acquisition.
1. Preparation
Check with the Inventory lead that you have all the required software access and have set up according to the Equipment List
Remove all the material from the dedicated BD extraction box for ingest. It is recommended to only work on material from a single accession at a time to make recording and carrying out appraisal and preservation decisions easier.
Open the 'Downloads' folder on your computer and create a folder with the accession number as its title.
Open the boxlist and find the entry for your first item using the unique identifier recorded on the item.
2. Virus checking
Plug the correct device for the format into the USB port of your laptop and insert the media into the device.
If the media can't be read, remove and double check the material is clean; see handling and cleaning guidance.
If it still won't read, check in another device to rule out an error with the connection.
If it still won't read, place in the dedicated box for unreadable media on windows and move on to the next item.
Follow the guidance from point 2-5 of Virus check with Windows Defender.
If a virus is found, follow What to do if a virus is detected. Record the failure in the appraisal notes according to the boxlisting guidance, alert an inventory team leader to the virus failure, and move on to the next item.
If the media can be read but no files are scanned during the virus check, it is likely that the files are mac formatted. Place in the dedicated box for unreadable media on windows and move on to the next item.
If it passes virus checking, go back to your 'Downloads' folder and open the accession number folder created earlier. Create another folder with the unique identifier recorded on the item as the title.
3. Appraisal and Copying
Follow the guidance Copying methods to determine how the content should be copied from the media.
If unsure of the exact format for optical discs, open AnyBurn and select 'View drive/disc information'. Select the correct drive and select view disc information, and click next. This will scan the disc and tell you the original format of the disc. Update the extent using the boxlisting guidance if it is inaccurate.
In the case of CD-ROMs and DVDs, you should still manually check the contents of the disc as in some cases the structure of the format doesn't necessitate being disk imaged. This is mostly where DVD R/W's and commercial CD-ROMs have been used as a form of data storage for PDFs or word documents.
If the item is blank, is a standalone piece of software, or is otherwise out of scope i.e. clearly not relevant to the collection, record as suitable in the appraisal notes according to the boxlisting guidance. Place the item in the dedicated BD extraction box for disposals and move on to the next item.
Once the method of copying has been chosen, carry out according to the guidance 1. Copying using Teracopy, 2. Disk Imaging Using AnyBurn or 3.Ripping using AnyBurn, copying to the folder you have created in your 'Downloads' folder.
If using teracopy, check that all files have been validated upon copying by clicking on the status tab. Any errors should be exported to CSV and saved to the collections file, and recorded in the appraisal notes according to the boxlisting guidance.
If using Anyburn to create a disk image, run DROID over both the disk image and the original disc. Create a temporary profile and then search for any unique values in excel.
Unreadable media on windows
Any media which is in the unreadable media on windows box needs to be tried on Mac instead.
Open the boxlist and find the entry for your first item using the unique identifier recorded on the item.
Plug in and turn on the virus checking MacBook Air.
Log on using username and password: wellcome
Attach the removable media to the laptop. For optical discs, you may need to use a Mac Superdrive but any external disc reader should work.
If the media is read, the attached media will appear as an icon in the top right of the screen.
If the media can't be read, check with another device to rule out an error with the connection or the external device. If it still can't be read, record that it is unreadable in the appraisal notes according to the boxlisting guidance. Place the item in the dedicated 'Unreadable Media' box and move on to the next item.
If a disc is unreadable in a Mac Superdrive, you may not be able to eject it using the MacBook Air. The quickest way to eject is plugging the Superdrive into a windows laptop and ejecting using the removable media ejection shortcut.
If the media can be read, open Symantec Endpoint Protection by clicking on the icon on the dock. If you can’t find it, go to File > Find > Applications and click on Symantec.
Check whether any software updates are required. If they are, connect to Wi-Fi and click ‘LiveUpdateNow’. Once any updates are completed, or if none are required, ensure that Wi-Fi is turned off.
Click on Scan > Run Custom Scan and then select the media in the pop-up window. Click ‘Scan’.
Once completed a scan summary will appear.
If a virus is found, alert the inventory team leader who will place the material aside for further work. Record the failure in the appraisal notes according to the boxlisting guidance, and move on to the next item.
If it passes virus checking, create a folder in 'Downloads' with the unique identifier recorded on the item as the title.
Copy and paste the item to the new folder, and move on to the next item.
Once all material is copied, attach the external ex-fat hard-drive to the MacBook and copy all downloaded folders to it.
Delete the copied material from the MacBook Air.
Eject the external ex-fat hard-drive and plug it in to your windows computer. Use teracopy to copy the material to the correct folders according to their accession numbers in your 'Downloads' folder.
4. Characterise files
Follow the guidance, Creating a DROID profile.
This profile acts as a characterisation of files prior to METS creation in Archivematica including non-normalised titles, last modified date, format of the file checked against PRONOM registry and creates a sha256 checksum to check the integrity of the content upon entering secure storage.
Until the information recorded in the METS files can be made more useable and reliable, a DROID profile should still be created so all the information above is easily accessible to cataloguers.
5. Create a transfer package
Follow the guidance, How to: create a transfer package.
6. Upload a transfer package
Follow the guidance, How to: upload the package to S3.
7. Record ingest processes
Once all ingest steps have been completed, follow this guidance to record the original media, virus check, and transfer processes carried out in the CALM accession record's ProcessNote field.
If you're unfamiliar with using CALM or there isn't already a ProcessNote field and you don't know how to add one, ask an Inventory Team member for help.
8. Manage physical items
Check the extent in the boxlist.
If the item is a DVD or CD-ROM format, place in the dedicated BD extraction box for long-term storage.
Otherwise, place in the dedicated BD extraction box for disposals.
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