“Digital Conservation? Mapping terms from Conservation to Preservation”
Crystal Sanchez, Video and Digital Preservation Specialist at the Office of the Chief Information Officer of the Smithsonian Institute

1100 Jefferson Dr. SW, Washington, DC 20560
9 January 2020
Attendance: Approximately 20

At the Washington Conservation Guild’s Annual 3-Ring Circus, Crystal Sanchez, Video and Digital Preservation Specialist at the Smithsonian  Institution discussed the role of digital preservation in both archival and art conservation. Sanchez probed into perceiving “digital” as a material form and discussed the common terminology that defines digital archives and materials as a collective. Though still a work in progress, Sanchez’s work stresses the importance of pinpointing the intersection of archival, digital, and art conservation.

The Smithsonian Digital Asset Management System (SI DAMS) is an internal enterprise system that focuses on the long term care of the conservation, access, management, and security of digital collections. SI DAMS contains files that includes but is not limited to conservation projects, events, lectures, art and artist interviews. How do these collections fit into DAMS, a single system? The main issue to consider is the scale of the digital collection. There are 25 million files in the system in which 500 of them are artwork files. With that in mind, Sanchez encouraged the collaboration between a variety of disciplines to find solutions for the proper storage and maintenance of this large scale digital data.

According to Sanchez, the next step for this project would be collaborate with conservators to assess what is required. The following elements will be considered: access and authenticity, mapping data, validation, metadata requirements, guaranteeing the location of files, annual reports and building applicable policies.

The Smithsonian’s Time-Based Media and Digital Art Working Group (TBMA) was created as a platform for dialogue between specialists from a variety of disciplines across the Smithsonian that focuses on building solutions, sharing strategies, and taking care of digital files. It is also a place to mark the similarities between the practices of archival, digital, and art conservation and create appropriate digital preservation frameworks. For instance, the physical storage of backup tapes is much like a physical storage facility for paintings. The realization of these similarities will guarantee that all file structures are considered in the construction of digital networks that aim to connect all aspects of the data in question. The outcome of these collaborations can be accessed with the link below and includes the SI DAMS TBMA Package Definitions outlining actions and policies for digital artwork file components in SI DAMS.

For more information on this project, visit: si.edu/tbma/about

Summary by: Tammy Ying Hong, Andrew W. Mellon Artist Materials Intern at the National Gallery of Art.