ßÙßÇÂþ» History Centre Guidelines for Potential Depositors of Born-Digital Records
File formats
Digital text files are best stored in widely available file formats, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe PDF, or open source software such as Open Office.
Image files should be saved as either jpegs (smaller, lower resolution images) or tiffs (higher resolution, larger image files). Audio files should be in mp3 (lower resolution) or wav (higher resolution) format. For video, mp4 files are preferred.
Organising and naming your files
It is very helpful to us if your digital files are organised into clearly labelled folders (for example minutes, annual accounts, project records) and that within each folder each file has an informative name, consistent with other similar files.
For example, files in a folder of committee minutes might be named as such, followed by the date the meeting took place, constructed in such a way that the files appear in a logical order.
The minutes of the meeting of 1 March 2025 and 6 April 2025 might be named (yyyy-mm-dd)
Committee minutes 2025-03-01
Committee minutes 2025-04-06
Earlier drafts of documents should be deleted before deposit and ephemeral material such as copies of invoices and insignificant letters should also be removed from a digital archive.
We reserve the right not to accept records with unclear file names and/or which are unorganised into clearly named folders.
Please also be sure to contact us if any of the records contain potentially sensitive personal information about living individuals which may need to be closed to public access for a period to comply with Data Protection regulations.
Storage media
We can receive data on CD, DVD and USB memory stick, and the latter is preferred. Small quantities of digital data could be sent to us as email attachments but this is not generally recommended.
Metadata
We would like to encourage depositors of digital archives to record metadata about the records. Metadata is information about the items and technical information needed to preserve them.
This might include documentation, in paper or electronic form, describing the purpose and content of the digital data, and instructions as to how to use it, if a database for example.
For digital images, some metadata could be recorded during the initial creation process and often digitisation software can generate some of this information automatically. Important technical information could include some or all of the following:
- Digitisation equipment used (scanner, digital camera, software)
- Date of digitisation
- Name of person creating digital image
- Resolution at which the image was scanned or photographed (for example 600dpi)
- Size of image (for example 2.5Mb or 2310 x 2456 pixels)
- Format in which the images are saved (for example tiff, jpeg)
- Name of digital file (which should be unique and reflect the description)
Other metadata concern the subject of the images themselves. The Dublin Core (DC) is an example of metadata, and the fields it suggests are:
- Title (brief description)
- Creator (person who created the original)
- Description (further description)
- Subject (for example agriculture, transport)
- Publisher (for example Francis Frith, photographer)
- Date (of original)
- Type (of document, for example photographic image)
- Format and size or original (further description of type, for example. glass plate negative, 6 inches x 8.5 inches)
- Identifier (any standard reference, for example International Standard Book Number [ISBN] number)
- Source (any reference number on original)
- Relation (reference of any related material)
- Coverage (date and place of original)
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
It is important to establish IPR when accessioning digital archives. If the digital archive is an image, we would like to know:
- Who owns the original?
- Who took the picture/scanned the image?
- Are they happy for the image to be made available to the public?
- Are there any copyright restrictions on its use, including providing hard copies and electronic copies, online publication, creating multiple copies for preservation, or migrating to alternative medium?
- Would the owner of the original, and the depositor of the digital image, be happy for ßÙßÇÂþ» History Centre to license the use of high quality images and what restrictions, if any, would be placed on such licensing.
Digital preservation activities
Digital records deposited with us will be copied from the original media on which it is delivered to us, and stored initially on Council data storage systems. We will create a file list of the deposited records, and they will then be uploaded to our Preservica digital preservation system.
At the moment, access to digital records for researchers is only via a visit to the History Centre.
Further advice
Authoritative, up to date advice on digital preservation can be found on .