Transfer and Inventory Services in Support of Preservation at the Library of Congress

The digital content lifecycle is generally understood as a set of activities: select, get and/or produce, prepare and/or assemble, describe, manage, and, as appropriate, make available. At the bit level, digital content is viewed as files on a file system. Many crucial activities of the digital content lifecycle are therefore undertaken primarily at the bit level, including transferring, moving, and inventorying files, and verifying that files have not changed over time. The identifiable entities at the bitlevel – files and directories -are widely and easily understood by Library of Congress digital collection data managers and curators. As part of its initial development in support pf preservation services, the Library is working on a suite of solutions to enable the activities of the digital lifecycle for files and directories. Current and planned tool and service development focus on the BagIt specification for the packaging of content; the LC Inventory System to record lifecycle events; and workflow tools that leverage both. The outcomes for the Library include the documentation of best practices, open source software releases, and support for a filelevel preservation audit.