DOCUMENTATION GOOD PRACTICE: Bringing Order in Disruptive Times

Abstract

In times of disruption we need to do the less interesting parts of our job better than ever. Documentation falls into this category - a sometimes neglected task that is often sidelined in favor of new and exciting innovations or even just the constant pressure of other routine tasks. It is easy to forget to create documentation or to let existing documents stagnate and become out-of-date. And yet, in the event of a disaster, it may be the very first thing we will turn to, to help to bring order to the chaos. When faced with lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, there is some evidence that digital preservation practitioners turned to maintenance tasks like documentation when working from home [1]. Digital preservation documentation is undoubtedly important to us in the digital preservation community but where is the good practice guidance that tells us what to document, when, where and how? This paper describes work at the Digital Preservation Coalition to gather together community experiences to create a new good practice guide on digital preservation documentation.

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Creators

Jenny Mitcham

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Keywords

documentation; good practice; guidance; collaboration

Publication Type

paper

License

CC-BY 4.0 International

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