title: Developing a Robust Migration Workflow for Preserving and Curating Hand-held Media
creators: Angela Dappert Akiko Kimura Andrew Jackson
abstract: Many memory institutions hold large collections of hand-held
  media, which can comprise hundreds of terabytes of data spread
  over many thousands of data-carriers. Many of these carriers are
  at risk of significant physical degradation over time, depending on
  their composition. Unfortunately, handling them manually is
  enormously time consuming and so a full and frequent evaluation
  of their condition is extremely expensive. It is, therefore, important to develop scalable processes for stabilizing them onto backed-up online storage where they can be subject to highquality digital preservation management. This goes hand in hand with the need to establish efficient, standardized ways of recording metadata and to deal with defective data-carriers. This paper discusses processing approaches, workflows, technical set-up, software solutions and touches on staffing needs for the stabilization process. We have experimented with different disk copying robots, defined our metadata, and addressed storage issues to scale stabilization to the vast quantities of digital objects on hand-held data-carriers that need to be preserved. Working closely with the content curators, we have been able to build a robust data migration workflow and have stabilized over 16 terabytes of data in a scalable and economical manner.
keywords: singapore data-carrier stabilization disk-copying robot digital preservation auto loader