Creighton Barrett, Digital Archivist at the Dal Archives, recently spoke at a Scientific Archives Workshop held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. The workshop was organized by Anne-Flore Laloë, Archivist at EMBL.

The workshop brought together about 40 archivists from Europe and the USA who are “responsible for capturing, preserving and sharing the advances of science as they are happening and changing our understanding of the world around us” (from workshop website). Creighton was the only speaker from Canada.

His presentation was called Beyond the research data: acquiring and preserving the personal archives of Canadian scientists. He presented three case studies:

Elisabeth Mann Borgese: http://findingaids.library.dal.ca/elisabeth-mann-borgese-fonds
Ransom Myers: http://findingaids.library.dal.ca/ransom-myers-fonds
Bill Freedman: Recent acquisition, no finding aid yet

Creighton talked about some of the general challenges with acquiring and preserving scientific archives and then presented a model (see the diagram below, click on it to enlarge) that integrates research data management (RDM) activities with digital preservation activities defined in two ISO standards: the “Open Archival Information System” for digital preservation and the “Producer-archive interface — methodology abstract standard” for acquisition of digital material.

The model suggests that personal archival material can be considered during the process of identifying and transferring research data that requires permanent preservation. If digital preservation systems are scaled up to accommodate large sets of archival research data, the infrastructure will be able to accommodate the additional acquisition and preservation of personal digital archival material that helps give important context to the research data.

Creighton’s slides are available in DalSpace.