An example of what a bad transfer from a damaged CD-R might look like.

NYPL’s workflow for transferring optical media to long-term storage was met with a challenge: an acquisition of a collection containing thousands of recordable CDs and DVDs. Many programs take a disk-by-disk approach to imaging or transferring optical media, but to deal with a collection of this size, NYPL developed a workflow using a Nimbie AutoLoader and a customized version of KBNL’s open-source IROMLAB software to batch disks for transfer. This workflow prioritized quantity, but, at the outset, it was difficult to tell if every transfer was as accurate as it could be. This project focuses on the process of evaluating the success of the mass transfer workflow, and the improvements I made to identify and troubleshoot errors that could occur during transfer.

Michelle Rothrock

Michelle Rothrock

Digital Archives fellow at NYPL, assistant at Semantic Lab, metadata nerd, two-hearted cat.