Brooklyn Academy of Music — BAM Hamm Archives
Written by Evelyn Shunaman
The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Hamm Archives recognizes the threat of a future digital Dark Age and is taking steps to prevent such a thing in its own record history. To date, we have made considerable progress toward ensuring that records are not lost. We have:
- Completed an inventory of the digital records created by the departments (approximately 40) within the institution.
- Updated our Records Retention Schedules to specifically address digital records.
- Developed procedures for archival ingest of digital materials from all departments.
- Begun researching methods for long-term preservation of our digital assets, and expect to have recommendations by the end of the spring.
We have learned a great deal from this effort and are happy to share our “lessons learned” with other institutions. However, there remains a major area of BAM’s digital records to address: Social Media and the institution’s website. There is wide agreement in the archival community that archiving social media is critical; it is now a major means of communication. But how should an archive collect and preserve the social media its institution creates and the comments received via social media? How much should be archived? All, or just a sample? Which social media platforms are to be considered part of the record? How will each platform be evaluated for inclusion in the collection?
A Metro fellow would evaluate options for collecting, storing, enabling access of, and preserving social media and website data. The fellow could survey other similar institutions to see how they are approaching this issue. At the completion of the fellowship, we would like to have a concrete plan for how the Archives will incorporate social media and web data into its holdings—at little or no additional cost. Such a plan would be of great value to other cultural institutions.