Digital Preservation Consultant, State Library of Massachusetts, Boston, MA

Posted July 30, 2016

The State Library of Massachusetts has an RFR open for a consultant to review, assess and recommend enhancements to the library’s digital preservation efforts. The library has a large and growing repository (using DSpace, an open-source repository software) of borne-digital and scanned materials. This material includes a Massachusetts Acts passed by the legislature back to 1892, proposed legislation, scanned and borne-digital documents from state entities, and digitized photographs, maps, atlases and manuscript material from the library’s collection.

Specifically, the consultant will review as all aspects of current digital preservation activities, including:

• Review and recommend enhancements to the library’s digital preservation policy
• Identify and document workflows, standards, and best practices
  • Inventory existing practices
  • Determine if practices are currently documented
  • Fill documentation gaps and improve existing documentation as necessary
  • Review documentation with all relevant staff
• Identify and document data security practices
  • Identify locations and environments where digital content is stored
  • Review security practices from staff responsible
  • Document data security procedure
• Manage digital objects
  • Identify stored digital objects and their components
  • Determine which components should be preserved and recommended how
  • Document results of first two activities
  • Ensure integrity of digital objects regardless of system used to store or provide access
• Identify and capture metadata necessary for preservation
  • Inventory current metadata standards and content
  • Determine whether the basic categories of preservation metadata are covered
  • Develop a plan to fill gaps
• Develop a migration plan
  • Determine whether all necessary metadata and files to recreate a digital object outside of a specific system are accessible
  • Document migration plan
• Test out workflow and practices by digitizing and preserving a sample collection

The full RFR is on the Commonwealth’s CommBuys system: https://www.commbuys.com/bso/. Note that to view the RFR, one needs to be a registered vendor in the system (a guide on how to register is available at http://www.mass.gov/anf/docs/osd/commbuys/vendor-registration.pdf. Once logged into the system, the link to the RFR is BD-17-1061-LIB01-LIB01-00000009278 (more information on searching the CommBuys system is available at http://www.mass.gov/anf/docs/osd/commbuys/how-to-search-in-commbuys.pdf.

The RFR will be open until August 18th. Questions regarding the RFR should be directed to Christopher Dupuis at [email protected].