BitCurator Access Project

The BitCurator Access project began on October 1, 2014 and ended on September 30, 2016. Funded through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (grant 31400605), the BitCurator Access team developed open-source software that support access to disk images through three approaches:

• Building tools to support web-based services
• Enabling the export of file systems and associated metadata
• Use of emulation environments with support for forensic disk image formats

The BitCurator Access project also developed a tool to redact files, file system metadata, and targeted bitstreams within disks or directories.

BitCurator Access focused on approaches to simplify access to raw and forensically-packaged disk images; allowing collecting institutions to provide access environments that reflect as closely as possible the original order and environmental context of these materials. The use of forensic technologies allows for detailed metadata to be generated reflecting the provenance of the materials, the exact nature of the file-level items they contain, and the metadata associated with both file-level items and data not observed within the file system (but still accessible within the original materials).

Software downloads and other products of the BitCurator Access Project can be found on the BitCurator Access wiki page.

People

The personnel and advisory group bios below cover involvement between October 2014 and September 2016. They are retained for historical reference; current affiliations and positions may differ. Follow the bookmark links below to jump to personnel and advisory panel sections.

• Project Personnel
• Advisory Board

Project Personnel

Christopher (Cal) Lee, PI (UNC SILS)

Christopher (Cal) Lee is Associate Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He teaches courses on archival administration; records management; digital curation; understanding information technology for managing digital collections; and acquiring information from digital storage media. He is a lead organizer and instructor for the DigCCurr Professional Institute, a week-long continuing education workshop on digital curation, and he teaches professional workshops on the application of digital forensics methods and principles to digital acquisitions.

Cal’s primary area of research is the long-term curation of digital collections. He is particularly interested in the professionalization of this work and the diffusion of existing tools and methods into professional practice. Cal developed “A Framework for Contextual Information in Digital Collections,” and edited and provided several chapters to I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era published by the Society of American Archivists. Cal has been Principal Investigator of the BitCurator and BitCurator Access projects. Cal has served as Co-PI on several projects focused on preparing professionals for digital curation responsibilities: Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum (DigCCurr), DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners; Educating Stewards of Public Information for the 21st Century (ESOPI-21), Educating Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure (ESOPI2), and Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG). He is Senior Personnel on the DataNet Federation Consortium, funded by the National Science Foundation.

Kam Woods, Co-PI (UNC SILS)

Kam Woods is a Research Scientist in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently Technical Lead on the BitCurator project, and works with Dr. Cal Lee developing techniques and tools to assist in long-term archiving of born-digital data.

Kam’s research focuses on long-term preservation of born-digital materials. He is interested in interdisciplinary approaches that combine technologies and expertise in the areas of archiving, computer science, and digital forensics for the purpose of enabling and maintaining access to digital objects that are at risk due to obsolescence. Prior to his current work at UNC, Kam worked with Cal Lee on the development of educational materials to support the use of realistic forensic datasets in professional training and to identify and explore novel uses of forensic data and tools in the context of digital archives.

Alex Chassanoff, Project Manager (UNC SILS)

Alex Chassanoff is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include the information behavior of digital archive users, digital materiality, and curation and preservation environments. Her current research looks at how historians use digitized photographs as evidence. Alex received her MSIS in 2009 and was a Digital Curation Fellow at SILS from 2008-2009. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a database programmer, IT consultant, and digital asset manager.

Sunitha Misra, Software Developer (UNC SILS)

Sunitha Misra is a Graduate Student at the School of Information and Library Sciences, pursuing her Masters in Information Sciences. She has a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Prior to joining the SILS for her second Masters degree, she worked as a Software Developer for major Networking and Operating Systems companies in the San Francisco Bay area and in Research Triangle Park.

Advisory Board

Geoffrey Brown, Indiana University

Geoffrey Brown is a Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received the BS in engineering from Swarthmore College, MSEE from Stanford University, and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987. He taught at Cornell from 1987-1997 and worked as a research scientist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories where he was one of the architects of the Lx (ST210) family of VLIW microprocessors, and architect at several networking start-ups. His research interests include verification and design of digital systems, and the preservation of digital documents.

Mark Evans, History Associates

Mark Evans is the director of Digital Archives at History Associates and is responsible for serving our clients in this emerging market. Mr. Evans is recognized as a leading expert on digital archiving issues, challenges, and the range of available solutions. He offers clients a rare combination of engineering expertise and archival understanding, which are essential and complimentary considerations for establishing a successful digital archiving program. He has over a decade of experience in delivering a broad range of consulting and technology centric projects across multiple business and government sectors. Prior to joining History Associates, Mr. Evans worked as the Digital Archives Practice Manager for Tessella Inc. where he provided oversight and direction of the company’s digital archiving activities in North America.

Erika Farr, Emory University

Erika Farr is Head of Digital Archives in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She leads the born-digital archives program, assists with digitization projects, and supports other digital initiatives involving MARBL materials. She received her Master’s in Library Science from the University of North Texas at Denton and her Ph.D. in English Literature from Emory University. Her current research interests include human information behavior in archival settings and digital humanities research methodologies.

Matthew Farrell, Duke University

Matthew Farrell is the Digital Records Archivist for Duke University Archives. He is responsible for overseeing the appraisal, ingest, arrangement and description, and delivery of born-digital content at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He holds a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information & Library Science. His research interests include providing virtualized access environments to born-digital materials and leveraging the capture of web-based communication to identify and automate the capture of additional web resources.

Bradley Glisson, University of South Alabama

William Bradley Glisson is currently an Associate Professor at the University of South Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, 2008, Master of Science in Information Management from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, 2001, Bachelor of Science in Information Systems & Operations Management from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1999, and a Bachelor of Science in Management from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1993. Dr. Glisson has ten years of industrial experience which includes working for U.S. and UK Global Fortune 500 financial institutions. His area of research focuses on digital forensics, information assurance, software engineering, and applied computing science with a specific interest in the security and business implications of residual data. Previous to this appointment, he was the Director of the Computer Forensics MSc program at the University of Glasgow for five years. He builds on previous administrative and teaching experiences to teach and improve digital forensic courses while researching prevalent real-world digital forensic issues at the University of South Alabama.

Matthew Kirschenbaum, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland and Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH, an applied thinktank for the digital humanities). He is also an affiliated faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Maryland, and a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School. His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, was published by the MIT Press in 2008 and won the 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS), the 2009 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), and the 16th annual Prize for a First Book from the Modern Language Association (MLA). In 2010 he co-authored (with Richard Ovenden and Gabriela Redwine) Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, a report published by the Council on Library and Information Resources and recognized with a commendation from the Society of American Archivists. Kirschenbaum speaks and writes often on topics in the digital humanities and new media; his work has received coverage in the Atlantic, New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired, Boing Boing, Slashdot, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. See https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/ for more.

Don Mennerich, New York University

Donald Mennerich is Digital Archivist at New York University Libraries. He was previously a digital archivist with The New York Public Library’s Manuscripts & Archives Division. Before that, he worked as a digital archivist with Manuscripts and Archives at Yale University and as a metadata archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He holds a MS in Information Systems from Pace University, with a concentration in Information Security, and an MLS, with a concentration in archives management, from Simmons College.

Alex Nelson, National Institute for Standards and Technology

Alex Nelson is a Computer Science Ph.D. student working under Professor Darrell Long in the Storage Systems Research Center and Working-group on Applied Security and Privacy at UC Santa Cruz. He has been a Research Assistant at the Naval Postgraduate School, and worked as a Visiting Research Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology with Prometheus Computing. His research and interests include secure archival storage, computer security, indexing, long-term data management, and digital forensics. In forensics, his research encompasses drive profiling techniques, storage system analysis tool interoperability, and measurement of software effects.

Michael Olson, Stanford University

Michael G. Olson is the Service Manager for the Born-Digital / Forensics Labs for Stanford University Libraries (SUL). In this capacity he manages SUL’s digital archivist and a staff of hourlies and students in the capture and preservation of legacy computer media acquired for Stanford’s collections. Michael is also the lead technologist for Stanford on a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology National Software Reference Library to preserve a large collection of historic software dating from the 1970s through the 1995. Before joining Stanford University Libraries in 2001, Michael received an MPhil in History and Computing in 2000 from the University of Glasgow, and a BA from the University of British Columbia in Medieval Studies in 1997.

Klaus Rechert, University of Freiburg

Klaus Rechert is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg. As a project manager he currently oversees a federal project “Statewide development of coordinated structures for indexing and re-use of research data” and is scientific consultant in the DFG-LIS project “Reading Room Access of Multimedia-Object using Emulation”. His research focus is on functional preservation of scientific data and processes, privacy protection in context of complex data and digital forensics. From Oct 2011 – Dec 2013 Klaus was the project manager of the bwFLA project, a two-year project funded by the state Baden-Württemberg, leveraging emulation for access and migration tasks in digital preservation. In 2010 Klaus was a guest lecturer at Malta College of Art, Science & Technology. From Oct. 2010 – Mar. 2011 he was a visiting researcher at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan. Klaus studied Computer Science and Economics at the University of Freiburg and received a Diploma in Computer Science in 2005. Since 2013 Klaus holds doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg.

Susan Malsbury, New York Public Library

Susan Malsbury is the Digital Archivist for The New York Public Library, working with born digital archival material across the three research centers of the Library. In this role, she assists curators with acquisitions; oversees technical services staff handling ingest and processing; and coordinates with public service staff to design and implement access systems for born digital content. Susan received her Masters in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute in 2009 and has worked with archives at NYPL in various capacities since 2007.

Kari Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kari René Smith is the Digital Archivist for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections working in the areas of digital archives, digital forensics, intellectual property, preservation metadata, and developing and refining workflows for managing born-digital records and archives. Prior to joining MIT Libraries, she headed the Visual Resource Collections for the History of Art at Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has a long-standing interest in and professional engagement with using, developing, and promoting metadata for archival, special and visual material collections. Her professional work with digital material spans two decades in a variety of organizational settings. She holds a Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan, School of Information.

Dorothy Waugh, Emory University

Dorothy Waugh is the Digital Archives Project Archivist at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University, where she is responsible for the selection, appraisal, arrangement, and description of digital and born digital manuscript and archival material, with a particular focus on literary manuscript collections. Dorothy joined MARBL nearly three years ago, after having received her Master of Library Science from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2012 and her Master of Arts in English Literature from the Ohio State University in 2010.

Brad Westbrook, ArchivesSpace

Brad Westbrook is Program Manager for ArchivesSpace. He serves as the liaison between the ArchivesSpace developer and user communities and assists in shaping a strategic vision for the ArchivesSpace program. He works closely with the advisory groups and the wider archives community to identify near-term and long-term user needs. He also leads the day-to-day support, outreach, training and membership activities of the community in support of ArchivesSpace members. Prior to joining ArchivesSpace, Mr. Westbrook was the Archivists’ Toolkit project manager and lead designer and the head of the Metadata Analysis and Specification Unit in the University of California, San Diego Library. He previously served as lead designer for the Mellon-sponsored Union Catalog of Art Images project, as the Manuscripts Librarian and University Archivist at the University of California San Diego, and as the exhibits curator at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscripts Library. He has an MLS from UCLA and an MA in English from SUNY-Albany.

Doug White, National Institute for Standards and Technology

Douglas White leads the National Software Reference Library project for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Doug has worked at NIST since 1987. His experience has covered distributed systems, distributed databases and telecommunication protocols, real time biomonitoring, real time video processing, system administration and network monitoring. He holds both a B.A and M.S. in computer science from Hood College. He has given lectures for the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the High Technology Crime Investigation Association, the Digital Forensic Research Workshop and numerous other digital forensic conferences.

Carl Wilson, Open Planets Foundation

Carl works for the Open Planets Foundation, in particular with their contribution to the SCAPE project. Prior to that he worked for The British Library’s Digital Preservation Team on internal and external projects, including a brief spell as Technical Co-ordinator for the SCAPE project. He spent three years as a technical lead on the Planets Project, developing the Interoperability Framework and Service Interface definitions. He also helped to organize and run the Planets Service Developer’s Workshops. Carl particularly enjoys Hackathon style events, and is a regular attendee at the OPF’s events, as well as those organized as part of the SPRUCE and AQuA projects.