Managing a Digital Media Backlog: Lessons Learned on Zipping Through Disks

Abstract

Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives at IUPUI is working on a 2-year project, funded by the Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund, to transfer all records off of a 30-plus year backlog of floppy disks, optical discs, zip disks, flash drives, and all other sorts of obsolete digital media hiding in paper collections. Like many archives, we have known for years that our window to preserve this material was rapidly closing as media readers disappeared, and the media itself succumbed to inherent vice. Denise Rayman will present how they created a plan to save this material, including inventorying material, estimating labor hours needed, developing a budget, and managing the logistics of multiple student workers processing media simultaneously. These hard-won lessons in project management are applicable to other archivists working on similar backlog projects.