The born-digital deluge : documenting twenty-first century events

With digital recording devices readily available to most people, events are documented and shared on-line in real time by the “person on the street.” The ease of creation and dissemination belies what archivists know will be the long-term challenges of organizing and preserving collections of born-digital information. While other processes require little modification, the inherent fragility of digital content and the ease of depositing files call for a substantial modification of established procedures. In this article, three University of Louisville archivists discuss their approach to the acquisition, copyright transfer, file naming, selection, description, and preservation of born-digital content donated by the local community to document Louisville’s August 2009 flood.