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- Archival Film Flashes Back to 70s Student Life
- Manuscript Traces SFU's Architectural History
- Early University News Publications Now Digitally Available
- Digitized Programs Commemorate SFU’s Opening & Installation Ceremonies
- Archives Celebrates Fall Convocation with Release of Digitized Programs
- Films Capture Visual History and Sentiment of Time Gone By
- Lost and Found: Simon Fraser Letters
- Oral History Provides Glimpse into Mind of SFU’s First Chancellor Gordon Shrum
- Early SFU Photos Tell a Story That Frames Our World
- Aerial Photos Capture Campus Landscape & Photographer’s Legacy
- You have what...?!! and other interesting things you didn't know about the SFU Archives
- Charting the course of history: documenting SFU's early days from the student perspective (Part 1)
- Charting the course of history: documenting SFU's early days from the student perspective (Part 2)
- Helping others find their history in the future: Preserving the records of the Students of Caribbean and African Ancestry at SFU
- Preserving the sparks of global revolution in the Adbusters Media Foundation fonds
- Reflections of a co-op student
- Debunking popular myths and conspiracies with the Barry Beyerstein fonds
- In "The Beginning...": First student film returns to SFU
- "Got any pictures of Terry Fox?"
- My summer in the archives: a co-op placement retrospective
- Seeing the world through Arthur Erickson's eyes
- Beer (records) in the Archives!
- Quartet in the Quadrangle: PSQ Records Come to SFU
- Navigating silences and filling gaps: finding Black stories in the Archives
- Boxes, boxes, and more boxes: my summer co-op at SFU Archives
- Glossary
SFU MoveIt
SFU MoveIt is a small Python-based desktop utility for packaging digital records for transfer to the Archives. The application was developed by Alex Garnett, SFU Research Data Management & Systems Librarian. The latest version (2.0.6) was released in December 2020.
- Download link: https://github.com/axfelix/moveit-electron
- exe file = Windows version
- dmg file = Mac version
Description
SFU MoveIt follows the BagIt File Packaging Format to create transfer packages on a user's local machine as standard BagIt containers ("Bags"). The app provides an interface for users to enter transfer metadata (contact information, records description) which is written to the Bag. The transfer is then ready for upload to a designated deposit folder on SFU Vault, the university's file-sharing and storage service.
Using SFU MoveIt offers four main advantages over basic upload / copying of unpackaged files.
(1) Based on standards. SFU MoveIt creates standardized transfer packages that implement the BagIt specification, ensuring that transfers are consistent and predictable in structure, regardless of content.
(2) Generates checksums. SFU MoveIt creates a checksum for each file packaged. A checksum is an alpha-numeric value calculated by an algorithm applied to the file's underlying bitstream (the string of 0s and 1s). It functions as a kind of "digital fingerprint": any change to the bitstream will generate a completely different checksum when the same algorithm is applied. This enables the Archives to validate transfers by comparing the files' pre- and post-transfer checksums. In this way we can identify any files that suffered corruption or data loss during transmission and request users to re-send them.
(3) Preserves timestamps. SFU MoveIt preserves the original timestamps (date created and date modified) of the files included in the packages. This is useful metadata that would be lost if you simply copy / upload files to the deposit folder on SFU Vault.
(4) Incorporates user-supplied metadata. The information provided by users about the transfer is important contextual information, valuable for the long-term management of the materials and for their future understandability and use. SFU MoveIt retains the metadata within the transfer package itself so that it is carried forward with the records through their subsequent life in the digital preservation system.
SFU MoveIt is an open-source tool and may be freely adapted. For download (app or source code), visit the app's release page on GitHub. The latest version (2.0.6) was released in December 2020 and is available for both Windows and Mac OS.
- The Windows version requires Windows 10.
- The Mac version was designed and mainly tested in Mac 10.16; it requires minimum 10.14, though some users have reported difficulities using it with that operating system.