[DCRM-L] Artists' books with accompanying digital media

[Randal Brandt]

Hi all,

This is not a cataloging question, per se, but I thought I might get some
helpful advice from this group.

At The Bancroft Library, we are currently re-examining our workflows around
artists' books that come in with accompanying media. For many years,
the media was in the form of a compact disc; now, more frequently, it is in
the form of a USB flash drive, and usually the book or housing has been
specially constructed to hold the media in place. Our current policy is to
remove the media, create a separate holdings and item record for it, and
shelve it separately from the book, with curatorial approval required for
users to access the media. Discs are easy to store in this manner; flash
drives (especially some that have been created as an integral part of an
artists' book), are more problematic. That's the part we are re-examining.

The discussion about leaving media in place has also surfaced a discussion
about long-term digital preservation. We are pondering a workflow that
would send the artists' book from cataloging to our digital collections
unit, where they would copy the media into our digital preservation system
(this would be a dark copy, only there for the day when the media fails)
before being made available to users in our reading room.

As part of our discussions, we were wondering what other institutions do in
these cases.

Do you leave the media in place with the host item?
Do you require any special permission for users to access the contents of
the media?
Do you perform any preemptive preservation of the contents of the media?

Many thanks,
Randy
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