3. Extracting technical metadata with FITS

The File Information Tool Set (FITS) is a command-line program produced by Harvard Library Technology Services that extracts technical metadata from a variety of file types. There are a number of different file analysis tools, many of which are focused on specific filetypes (images, audiovisual files, etc.). FITS combines a number of these tools into a single command.

When FITS analyzes a file, it determines the appropriate tool to use and saves any technical metadata it extracts as an XML file. These XML files may be useful for rendering preserved files in the future, so files bound for preservation should be processed with FITS whenever possible.

Download FITS here: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/fits/home. Download the ZIP folder and extract it somewhere easy to access, like C:\fits.

The fits.bat file in the zipped folder is the batch file that Windows systems can run. fits.sh is the shell script that Unix systems can run.

FITS uses relatively simple command syntax. First, point to the .bat or .sh file, then name an input directory containing files to be scanned, an output directory where XML files will be saved, an optional "-r" (recursive) option that tells the program to look through subdirectories, followed by the “-xc” options to improve the contents of the output.

In the bag structure you created, the input (“-i” followed by the input path) will be the “_files” directory containing archival files, and the output (“-o” followed by the output path) will be the corresponding “_files_metadata” folder. Here’s how the command looks on Windows:

FITS will analyze each file in the “_files” folder and create a corresponding XML file in the “_files_metadata” folder. This process will take some time for folders containing many large files. If you have a “_derivatives” folder, run FITS on it and output to the “_derivatives_metadata” folder.

If you receive an error related to Java or JAVA_HOME when trying to run FITS, contact Desktop Support and tell them you need help installing Java, mapping your JAVA_HOME system environment variable, and adding your Java folder to the Path system environment variable.