 Hello, I'm Lindsay Memory. I'm the digital initiatives workflow supervisor at Brigham Young University's Herald-Beeley Library. And I'm Ryan Lee. I'm a manuscript curator in the Elthom Perry Special Collections at BYU. And we're here to discuss how we at Brigham Young University's Herald-Beeley Library are navigating risk in post-custodial digitization projects. Before we begin, I'd like to note that we're presenting less of a finished project and more of the on-ramp to a project. You're going to hear about our deliberations, our research, and the outstanding dilemmas we've encountered, which seem to be pretty ubiquitous among institutions looking at post-custodial digitization. These dilemmas may or may not allow us to implement a post-custodial workflow at our institution. We seek to further the small but important conversation around post-custodial digitization practices with you. We welcome different perspectives. We want to hear your experiences. We'd love your input. And we'd love to hear about how other organizations have approached these topics. We'll leave our email addresses at the end of the presentation. We hope to hear from you. So just so we're all on the same page, the post-custodial theory of archives entails the notion that archives and other memory institutions like libraries and museums will no longer acquire physical records, but rather provide management of records that remain with their creators. In digitization, the post-custodial idea has become sort of a buzzword today, often taking the form of scan and return or digitize and return projects. These usually entail a donor loaning their materials temporarily to be digitized by an archive which also preserves, describes, and usually provides access to a digital copy only, and then they return the physical item to its owner. The flexibility of this approach can aid memory institutions in providing access to a more diverse and representative variety of materials from community members who would not otherwise donate their records. This method has become especially alluring as the volume of materials with the potential of forming our documentary heritage begins to exceed the limits of what could possibly be physically incorporated into that documentary heritage. So in 2013, the history and your attic project began as a joint effort between the members of Mountain West Digital Libraries and was headed by BYU's Harold Bealey Library. The project goals seemed pretty simple at the time. Member libraries would take turns hosting remote digitization events at local community spaces across the state of Utah, and our goal was to digitally capture individuals' family and local history primary source documents, particularly those in danger of deterioration or loss in the upcoming decades. These events were headed up by a curator in consultation with local community organizations, metadata personnel, interviewed the donors, captured descriptions, and created unique identifiers for items, and then passed the objects onto digitization personnel who would photograph the items and then edit it after the events and send one copy to the donor, one copy to our content DM repository, one copy to the Mountain West Digital Library Consortium, and then the master TIF files would go to Rosetta for digital preservation. BYU has hosted 11 of these scanning events in the past eight years, and I personally love the unique digital copies we've collected from Utahns. You have diaries, personal papers, and troves of unique photographs that all went back to their original owners. We encountered a couple of reoccurring hiccups with our history and your attic events. First, you really have to have engaged community partners that's really important, or you don't have very many donors show up. We learned over time that we definitely need to pick locations that have a lot of outlets and really good Wi-Fi. Metadata collection at the time of the event is really important. Those interviews with the donors, that's often your only shot to get all your descriptive metadata, and there's a lot of work that goes in on the metadata and description side after the event. Often people bring in items that defy easy identifier assignment like scrapbooks where there's several things on one page and how do you decide which things you're describing. And then as time has gone on, there's been mixed interest from our partner institutions and also from the leadership about continuing these events. But we took off these reoccurring hiccups as kind of just a quirk of this unique project. That is until we began in earnest to construct a cogent digitizing return workflow for other donations that were coming into the library in 2019. At that point we asked ourselves, okay, so how does post-custodial digitization work with other collections? And Ryan is going to describe what happens next. Yeah, thank you, Lindsay. For this portion of our presentation, I'll be talking about a more holistic process we're going through to figure out the best way for us to navigate risk when handling post-custodial digitization requests from our donors. This is taking some of what we learned from history and erratic and applying it across all these types of requests that we receive in our department. Our first step was setting up a task for some interested parties and stakeholders in the process. When this was initially set up in 2019, we were simply trying to determine the best workflow for these types of requests. Outside of history and erratic, we do not get these requests very often, but often enough that when we do, they're a bit of a headache for those involved in the workflow since they differ from our typical workflow for acquiring and processing physical collections. The biggest issues were regarding tracking and security of the materials while in our possession. So our first goal was to find a solution for those risks and determine how these requests would follow different procedures for accessioning, processing, cataloging, and preservation. The task force membership included curators, metadata and cataloging specialists, and staff members in collection management, digitization and digital preservation. This would ensure that there were representatives from each part of the workflow and I was asked to chair this task force. While I went into the first meeting hoping to answer a small set of questions regarding tracking and security, it quickly became apparent that this was not a simple problem to solve. It was much more complex than it first appeared. In that meeting, the issue of rights, specifically digital preservation rights, came up. To be honest, this is not something I'd ever thought of. We learned that the rights to preserve something digitally is not automatic just because the owner of the item allows us to copy it. If we want to preserve these items long-term, then we needed to make sure we had the rights to preserve their digital form. Many questions about this ensued, particularly we wondered if our basic gift agreement form covered this since it did allow us to make and preserve copies of things we physically owned and we did not know for sure, so we decided to consult our university legal counsel. As we began working with legal counsel, additional rights issues began to emerge. This included copyright, particularly if the request includes published items or photographs not taken by the lender and third-party privacy rights. This becomes particularly sticky if we want to publish the digitized materials online. So for each project, we are going to have to be meticulous in reviewing the collection, looking for anything that might be a violation of rights which we may not be able to secure through the typical gift agreement. While the risk may be low for such requests and the chances of litigation for violation of these rights may be minimal, we took the stance that they are risk nonetheless and that we must be aware of and consider with such projects. Admittedly, we are probably a little more risk-averse than some universities. Of all the rights that we are risking to violate with post-custodial projects, copyright is something that is more easily determined but is also most crucial to make sure it is secured before putting these items online. In our consultations with legal counsel, we have learned that more and more educational institutions are being sued for copyright violations and we cannot always fall back on old notions. It is operating from a good faith standpoint or take down procedures when complaints arise. We still have a responsibility for making sure all rights are secured before making any form of publication, including online publishing of digitized materials. While this can be done through the contracts or agreements our donors and lenders sign, if they do not own the copyright of these materials, the gift agreement does not does little good in transferring those rights to us. Another risk related to copyright was something that we never thought of until it was brought up in a meeting of other curators. Often when a donor signs over a copyright for their materials, it may devalue the collection, especially if they're planning to try and sell the original elsewhere when they have already allowed us to put digital images of these materials online. Privacy rights violations are another potential risk that we were made aware of, although they are less obvious and are usually mitigated through awareness, ethical practices and policy as opposed to a formal agreement. These usually apply to personal materials that are created by someone who is not the lender, like letters to the lender from another person. It could also include a photograph of a person who is not the lender or a private journal entry about another person. These person's rights should also be recognized when scanning materials, especially in the intent as to publish them online. With all these rights issues to consider, it can be a bit discouraging and we often feel like it might be best to avoid post-custodial digitization requests altogether. However, we do see benefits to these types of requests and they are becoming more frequent. So then what can we do? Well, we've determined that we need to come up with criteria for the types of collections that have the lowest number of rights related risks. Here are some questions we've considered to help determine this. First and foremost, we must always make sure we are adhering to any agreements we have made with our donors. Next, are these materials created by the person signing the agreement or someone else? If someone else, the person signing the agreement does not own any rights to the items besides basic rights of possession. Are there any items with a registered copyright? If so, do not scan them. How old are the items? Items older than 1926 are the least risk including copyrighted and unpublished items. Are the items very valuable or from permanent people? If so, we need to make sure the donor or lender has the rights to donate them. Unfortunately, rights are not the only risks to consider with post-custodial digitization projects. Another major issue is the number of resources required for such requests. This includes resources for tracking and security of loan materials, metadata creation, and digital preservation and storage. The issue that started all this was tracking and security. This is still a great risk because even though we do not own these materials, we are still responsible for their safekeeping while they are in our possession. And we are still trying to figure out the best way to handle this here at BYU. It will likely require additional temporary space to house these items while being scanned and processed and a tracking mechanism in place that keeps constant tabs on the location of the materials. Since the location is only temporary, we are not sure how to use the same system we use for permanent items, which uses barcodes of the housing of the materials. Temporary boxes, folders, and barcodes are an option we are exploring. Metadata creation is probably one of the most more significant issues to consider. As mentioned, this was a major issue with history neuratic. The standards we follow at BYU require an advanced level of metadata for anything digital, translating into more work up front for curators, and in the end for catalogers and metadata staff. For any physical collections that are going to be digitized, we require at least file level, if not item level, or descriptions to be in place in a finding aid prior to digitization. For post-custodial collections, we have the same requirement, although some description can be done at the same time that digitization is happening, but there must at least be enough description in place to be able to create the identifiers. For large collections, this can be problematic and result in the items being in our possession for a long period of time. Not only does this increase risk of loss or damage, but it may not be something donors are comfortable with, and we need to make sure we set the appropriate level of expectations when it comes to how long a project may take to complete. This was definitely an issue with a project that had been started before our task force was set up, and we want to avoid this as much as possible in the future. Then comes digital preservation and storage. While digital storage can be cheap, the long-term maintenance of these digital assets is not, so if we are going to take these projects on, we need to make sure we have adequate digital storage space and the infrastructure in place for long-term preservation of these digital assets. Also, these will be competing for resources with digitized collections we actually own the originals for. We need to determine the priority of these items and, if or when, they should take precedence over other digital collections. All of these are things we need to consider when a request for post-custodial digitization is made. So, once all these risks are assessed, who's a lucky person or a group of people who gets to approve these projects? Again, this is something we are still determining. It is more complex than one might think, since these projects are a hybrid of both an acquisition of new materials and a digitization project. Here at BYU, approvals for acquisitions and digitization are made by separate groups of people. Acquisitions of special collections materials are approved by the Special Collections Development Committee, while digitization projects are approved by a library-wide reformatting committee. So, while this is still being determined, it is likely in the end that both of these bodies will need to review and approve any post-custodial digitization projects. Recent changes in our GIST procedures may also require that these types of requests get approval from our library effort administration. This means just one more hoop to jump through for curators who are handling these requests. Now, I'll turn it back over to Lindsay to talk about research we've done and looking at other institutions and how they're handling post-custodial projects. Thanks, Ryan. So, as we began addressing each of these issues, we took the time to survey the landscape of other digitizing institutions. We looked for publications on processes, workflows, and deliberations. And the first big thing we noticed was that there is no silver bullet to the rights issues. It doesn't seem like anybody feels confident saying, like, I know how this works. And this is an issue where we really want to see, though, what is working for institutions. We feel there are no options that are risk-free, and we're not sure which way to go. But our survey has led us to conclude that there is roughly three tracks an institution can take. You can do a rights transfer. This was common more when these projects first started developing. So in 1994, one of the first projects was at Virginia Commonwealth University. They didn't collect any permissions or rights until about halfway through. And then they realized they probably would be doing that. And they subsequently started asking people to transfer the copyright of their items to VCU. Another option that has come more into vogue since then is some type of rights permission, license alone. We looked a lot at UNLV, which has an ongoing scan and return process. And they sign a loan reproduction agreement, as opposed to a deed of gift. This secures permission for UNLV to store, use, use, and distribute the reproductions. But it doesn't guarantee digitization or long-term stewardship, which I thought was interesting. And they said that they leave those things out so that when they find tricky objects, they can just not digitize those ones. Another option that I've seen starting to advance is Memoranda of Understanding. That works best with when you're partnering with an institution that plans to use your archive. As it's repository, I'd love to see how that develops. And if anybody is using those, I want to hear from you. And then the third option. So if anyone out there is from University of Texas, I read in one of your publications that you essentially purchased the resulting digital files. And I really want to understand more about what that means. I'd love to hear from you. So those are the three options that we can see out there. We're still trying to figure out which one we feel most comfortable with. And then, so with History and Your Addict, we kind of took somewhat of a middle approach. We had them sign a permission. It waived some liability for damage. Digitizing is a stressful process on physical materials. And then we had them grant us reproduction and public display rights to both BYU and the Mountain West Digital Library. But we don't feel that this particular form is sufficient for future donations. Nothing in this form inherently allows us to digitally preserve digital objects and takedowns are not covered. And nothing in our current loan agreement fully covers that work either. And something else on our mind as we considered rights issues is the observation made by Brits and Lour. They were commenting on the ethics of digitization projects in Africa, but I feel that their observation is true to all post-custodial projects. We just noted that the entirety of the rights discussion focuses perhaps too much on contracts and licensing, which can lead to economic exploitation. So we're left still asking and wondering, are there other options besides contracts that would mitigate risk for both the donor and the memory institution? Yeah, I'd love to hear people's thoughts. So another one that we looked a lot at what other institutions have done is metadata. As many of you know, I'm sure all of you know, the potential for poorly described digital documents to become either undiscoverable, intellectually lost, or we can't authenticate them later is really significant. It's important to get this right. And so I think one of the big things, one of the big questions is, do you perform authority work or not perform authority work? And I've seen a number of different conversations about this out in the research. So I did find interesting somebody ventured to say, hey, memory institutions, their knowledge of formal standards is something that they do lend to the world that is valuable in these types of projects. But that being said, not all institutions feel that way. We do, in our history and your attic finding aids, we had them be DAX compliant. We took the donor's descriptions that we obtained in the interviews in our scanning events. And then after the event, we would add authoritative and descriptive metadata, including a full subject analysis of the series and sub series level. We were pretty happy with with our metadata, but it does put a large burden on the metadata professionals who ideally need to be getting all the information from those donors in the initial interview and then crafting the rest later. It's, it's a big, it's a big project whenever we undertake these. And just for information, some of the other options include adjusted standards like Washington state's plateau people's web portal. They've created something that they call the moocurtue core, which is an extended version of Dublin core that has additional fields for Indigenous donors to author themselves. And I found the South Asian American Digital Archives project really, really interesting. It seeks to share its archival descriptive authority with its community so their donors fill out a template and they really value any comments made by online users after the fact and incorporate those. Note that this method does often limit their funding qualifications, but they as an organization feel that it's worthwhile as this type of description counters the symbolic annihilation of South Asian Americans in archives by allowing their voices to be heard in the description. So with those extra options, those just kind of that review of what different options are there. I'll turn it back over to Ryan one more time. He's going to discuss where we plan to go from here. Thank you, Lindsey. Yes, well, these are just some of the myriad issues we're grappling with when considering a policy and procedures for post-cosodial projects here at BYU. While there seems to be some agreement here that these types of projects should be something we offer, we are struggling to get consensus or something close to consensus on what types of collections we're willing to provide this level of service for and what criteria they need to meet before they can be under consideration. And we have explored the notion of focusing on the lowest hanging fruit, usually meaning those collections that are the oldest, which have the least number of rights issues, or in other words, the least risky. Yet coming up with the definition of these collections is still something we're struggling with. We're also trying to determine if we need to have a separate agreement form for these types of projects, or if we can make language into our current form that covers both donations of physical collections and for making digital scans of loan materials. Now, there are enough differences between the two types of projects that we are leaning toward creating another form for these types of projects, or doing something similar to what we use for history and your attic. But determining the proper language that covers any potential transferring of rights and other things we may want the lenders of the materials to agree with has been a bit of a challenge. As mentioned, also, we are still working through the details of the whole approval process as well. So perhaps those viewing this presentation have come across similar issues and maybe even have some answers that would be wonderful if you do. If you have, please feel free to send any feedback, examples of things you've worked on, or even suggestions of where to go for potential answers. This has been a project of over two years in the making and we'd love to finally be able to come to some conclusions and see the light at the end of this very long tunnel. So thank you so much for your time. We'd really love to expand our understanding of what other institutions make of these issues. If they see other snags or if they feel they have rights agreements or workflow or metadata processes that are really working. So please contact us, email us, send us a line. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you.