Between 2011 and 2014, the BitCurator project (phases 1 and 2), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, developed, packaged and documented open-source digital forensics tools to allow libraries, archives and museums (LAMs) to meet certain digital curation goals. It also actively engaged with interested professionals through conferences, specialized events, online interactions, and site visits. These provided a strong foundation of tools and relationships upon which the BitCurator Consortium now builds.
Today, the BitCurator Consortium continues to engage in projects that support practitioners responsible for the curation of born-digital materials, especially through the application of free and open-source tools. Information about an active BitCurator Consortium affiliated project is managed through its host’s website, accessible via the sections below. Once a project is complete, the BitCurator Consortium makes decisions about which outputs from the project they might maintain or build upon, and shares news about updates related to projects that are no longer hosted by an institution.
Interested in hosting a BitCurator Consortium affiliated project? Contact us!
The Sustaining Digital Curation and Preservation Training project began in 2018 and ended in 2019 and was supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The project engaged in multi-stakeholder scenario planning and developed a shared vision for expanding and supporting digital curation and preservation training.
For more information, visit the Sustaining Digital Curation and Preservation Training page on the Educopia website.
The OSSArcFlow project began in 2017 and ended in June 2020. OSSArcFlow was supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. OSSArcFlow project personnel worked with partner institutions to document and analyze born-digital workflows, and created an implementation guide and videos to support workflow documentation and analysis.
For more information, visit the OSSArcFlow page on the Educopia website.
The BitCurator Access project began on October 1, 2014 and ended on September 30, 2016. Funded through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the BitCurator Access team developed open-source software that support access to disk images through three approaches:
The BitCurator Access project also developed a tool to redact files, file system metadata, and targeted bitstreams within disks or directories.
For more information, visit the BitCurator Access page on the BitCurator project website.
The BitCurator NLP project began on October 1, 2016 and ended on December 31, 2018. BitCurator NLP was supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. BitCurator NLP project personnel developed software for collecting institutions to extract, analyze, and produce reports on features of interest in text extracted from born-digital materials contained in collections.
For more information, visit the BitCurator NLP page on the BitCurator project website.
The BitCurator project was a joint effort led by the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (SILS) and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) to develop a system for collecting professionals that incorporates the functionality of many digital forensics tools. The project was funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation between 2011 and 2014.
The BitCurator project website has historical information on various grant-funded BitCurator projects between 2011-2019 (BitCurator, BitCurator NLP, and BitCurator Access), including project documentation and links to software releases.
The BitCuratorEdu project was an effort (2018-2022) funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to study and advance the adoption of digital forensics tools and methods in libraries and archives through professional education efforts. This project is a partnership between Educopia Institute and the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) and several Masters-level programs in library and information science.
To learn more about BitCuratorEdu’s research and personnel, visit the project page on the Educopia website: https://educopia.org/bitcurator-edu/ (more…)