Digital Processing: Exploring the Enigma

Abstract

Archivists have spent the past several decades seeking solutions for managing born-digital collection materials. While progress has undoubtedly been made in the areas of acquisition and digital preservation, a recognizable gap exists in the area of processing. Defining what, exactly, born-digital processing is and what it entails is a conundrum. Following the 2016 Born Digital Archiving & eXchange (BDAX) unconference at Stanford University, a group of ten archivists produced the Digital Processing Framework to articulate what archivists do when processing born-digital archival collections. This article examines the current professional digital processing landscape and reflects on the framework group's lofty endeavor. It frames four issues that make born-digital processing enigmatic and challenging: defining the scope of digital processing; the ongoing tensions between minimal processing and digital preservation; confusion in terminology about the functions in digital processing; and the convergence of two fields of inquiry that borrow and share language and practice that have become digital processing. It concludes by recommending further actions and explorations for defining and guiding born-digital processing.