• Before acquisition, ask if the collection includes legally protected files, such as educational, medical, financial, criminal, attorney-client, and personnel records
• Inform the donor that the presence of sensitive information about individuals other than the donor or creator may limit access to their own files
• Make clear who will screen email messages for sensitive information and what the process will be. *Refer to Section VIII. Working with Email for further instruction*
• Ask the donor to complete the Privacy checklist in the Donor Guide

• Ask the donor if there is other people’s intellectual property in the donor’s files
• Discuss any rights held by individuals other than the donor or creator that would limit Special Collections ability to provide access and delivery of the files to researchers
• Discuss the methods by which Special Collections will provide researchers with access to the digital files

• Identify which born-digital materials are to be offered to Special Collections.
• Ask the donor to document the ways in which digital media and files have been stored, accessed, and transported prior to their arrival or collection by Special Collections.
• Complete the table below with the donor. Indicate which file types are included in the donation:

The deed of gift acknowledges transfer of ownership to Special Collections.

• Review the Deed of Gift
  • Transfer of copyright
  • Permission to make preservation and access copies
  • Permission to display online
  • Disposition of duplicate or unneeded materials
  • Disposition of computer hardware, removable media and files not retained
• The donor and Special Collections staff representative sign the Deed of Gift
• Provide a copy of the signed deed to the donor

Storage Media Inventory

Donors may choose to transfer digital records via removable storage media. If so, before Special Collections staff copy the digital records from the physical media, it is important to collect as much information as possible about the storage media itself.

• Record the following information in a media inventory spreadsheet. Name this file [accession number]-media-inventory.xlsx. Save this spreadsheet in the accession file. 
  • Accession number - the accession number assigned to the collection 
  • Unique ID – a unique ID assigned to each piece of storage media (ex. accession#–sequential number, 2017-001-01; 2017-001-002) 
  • Label information – a transcription of any pre-existing labels on the media
  • Date(s) -  The creation date or date range of the files stored on the media
  • Storage media type - The type of media
  • Storage capacity – maximum storage capacity of the media, expressed in gigabytes
  • Physical dimensions – dimensions of the media expressed height x width 
  • Manufacturer – manufacturer of the media 
  • Model/Series - if known, the model and series of the media 
  • External parts – list of any other parts that came with the media (cables, chargers, etc.)

Review the file formats identified by DROID and make note of at-risk file types. Identify the target preservation formats, access formats, and pathways if running normalization workflows on ingest into Preservica.