When someone thinks of archives the first image that comes to mind is likely shelves of boxes full of printed material or books, and this is certainly a central part of our work. However, as has been referenced in some earlier posts, an ever increasing amount of material exists only in a digital format and we at the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, have been continually working to develop capability and procedures for this rapidly growing and changing aspect of the archival profession. As such we thought it would be interesting to look at a recent example of this, specifically the handling of a computer from a now closed Moravian congregation.

The desktop computer in question was used by the office administrator at Mountainview Moravian Church in Hellertown, Pennsylvania, which closed recently. It was transferred to the archives alongside the physical records of the congregation in recognition of the fact that increasing amounts of records and communications are created and stored electronically, never existing in an physical format.

As can be seen in the photo above accessing and backing up the material on this PC required setting it up so that we could examine the contents. Once we had access we were able to quickly establish where the material needing to be preserved was stored and copy this material to an external hard drive. This hard drive was then connected to an archives computer and scanned for viruses, which flagged two files from the “downloads” folder as being Trojan viruses; these files were consequently deleted. After this the material was backed up using the same system we employ for items we have digitized.

The next step will be to process these materials, determining and recording what the content is as well as if any changes will need to be made to file names or formats to facilitate future preservation and access. While some of the material likely contains confidential or personally identifiable material, falling within our fifty year restriction period and thus not being available to researchers without permission from the Provincial Elder’s Conference, we are delighted to be able to expand our capacity to work with and preserve born digital material far into the future.