1. Preparing bag structures

UTL uses a standard structure for all bags written onto the tape archive. It is a good idea to create this structure in advance when preparing files for preservation. It is also a good idea to work on a second copy rather than the originals of any files that will be sent for preservation, in case you need to restore the original file structure for whatever reason

Choose a bag name*

First, choose a unique bag name that identifies the collection,* and (if needed) series, box, folder, or item number. The name should use underscores or hyphens rather than spaces to separate words.

Identifier abbreviations and numbering should be recognizable to collections managers, and should account for all potential overlap or duplicate bag names a collection might contain. For example, “wbs_0004” would refer to item #4 from the W. B. Stephens collection. Bag names can also contain series, subseries, and folder information, such as “mupi_hemeroteca_eslibre”, “mupi_hemeroteca_fapu”, etc.

Create a folder with the bag name in the workspace you will use for the preservation process.

*This has not been how Digital Stewardship has named bags since we began using SIPS in 2017.

Create subfolders*

Next, create two subfolders within the bag folder.

For the first subfolder, take the bag name and append “_files”, for example “wbs_0004_files”. Copy or move the archival assets to be preserved (i.e. TIFFs, MOVs, CR2s, etc.) into this folder. This folder can contain subfolders and files with any filename template: there is no need to change subfolders or file names to include the bag name, though having useful filenames is always a good idea.

For the second folder, take the bag name and append “_files_metadata”, for example “wbs_0004_files_metadata”. Copy or move any metadata files associated with the contents of the “_files” folder (or the whole collection) here. Like the “_files” folder, the “_files_metadata” folder can contain subfolders and files with any filenames. If you have several metadata files, it may be a good idea to create a “metadata” folder within “_files_metadata” to store these, to set these metadata files apart from the FITS metadata that will be created later.

If you have derivative files, create a “_derivatives” folder and a “_derivatives_metadata” folder as well. Copy derivative files into the “_derivatives” folder, and copy any metadata that corresponds specifically to the “_derivatives_metadata” folder. If you don’t have any metadata corresponding specifically to the derivatives, leave this folder empty for now.

Standard subfolder structure and naming for a folder ("utblac_wbs_0003") containing TIFF archival masters and JPEG derivatives.

*Should replace "bag name" in folder-naming with SIP number. We don't run FITS on our in-house digitization. Bag-info will also contain technical metadata and context. So, we don't use this type of _metadata folder.