This lightning talk is about iteration, ongoing maintenance, and the reevaluation of work done before. Over the last seven years, the University of Toronto Libraries imaged many of the floppy disks in its manuscript and archives collections. This work provided a baseline level of preservation for content by protecting the bits encoded on media from the risk of single-copy failure. However, more needed to be done to assess the content and its renderability. Inspired by the Software-Based Art Preservation project at the Tate and their conservation report templates (Ensom, Falcão and King, 2017-Present), we sought to conduct preservation assessments on our manuscript collections. This work involved the collecting archivist and digital preservation staff to collaborate closely. This lightning talk will cover the assessment process we are piloting, a brief case study from a recent collection, and recommendations for future assessments.

Links shared in the chat:

• Tate Software Based Art Preservation: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/software-based-art-preservation
• Get in touch: hafsah.hujaleh@utoronto.ca