From Floppy to Future: Converting Legacy Media into Digital Archives

Authors

• Jelle Kleevens (Archiefpunt)
• Lode Scheers (meemoo)
• Nastasia Vanderperren (meemoo)

Outline

Since the rise of personal computers in the 1980s, vast amounts of data have been stored on digital media like floppy disks, zip disks, and jaz disks. Modern workstations often cannot read them. This threatens data loss for every heritage organisation, from national archives to local historical societies.

Migrating data from outdated to modern storage media is complex, and not all organisations can set up a capture station for different digital media types on their own. They must first locate suitable legacy reading equipment and then connect it to modern workstations. Additionally, they need software to transfer the complete contents of the media to contemporary storage without alterations.

Through collaboration and resource sharing, AIDA, a consortium of heritage institutions focused on preserving digital private archives, developed strategies and solutions for this purpose.

AIDA Capture-Lab

The AIDA Capture-Lab is operated from the meemoo offices in Ghent and provides an obsolete data carrier capture service available for cultural heritage organisations. The capture lab was founded by AIDA in 2019 as a result of the Digital Repair Cafe project. By bringing together and sharing resources and knowledge, data transfer is much more efficient and sustainable. All workflows and setups are documented on the AIDA Capture Lab website.

RODA-In

• creating, loading, and editing classification schemas;
• automatic association of files/folders and metadata with SIP;
• definition of metadata templates;
• support for various metadata formats (EAD, DC, etc.);
• creating SIPs in various formats.

In this tutorial, we demonstrate the process of using RODA-In to convert digital archival data into Submission Information Packages (SIPs) for ingestion into e-depots.

Files