Update from Iram Safdar, former Graduate Trainee Digital Archivist 2017-2019

Photograph of Iram at Historic Environment Scotland, 2019.

Iram at Historic Environment Scotland, 2019.

After completing my Graduate Digital Archivist traineeship at the Bodleian Libraries, I moved back to Scotland to join Historic Environment Scotland, the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment, as a Digital Archivist for the Digital Projects Team. Situated in the Archives department, the Digital Projects Team is a three-year funded project aiming to significantly increase the volume of our archival material made accessible online. My role in the team is to manage the cataloguing and ingest of the born-digital material which has been deposited with the Digital Archive. This material consists primarily of archaeological project archives, as well architectural and maritime projects, and includes photographs, computer-aided design drawings, video footage, spatial data and more. This work has helped to inform appraisal policy, archival description standards, and digital preservation workflows. I utilise the skills I developed while undertaking my traineeship and Diploma on a daily basis, to enhance the discoverability of our collections, and ensure their long-term accessibility via the implementation of a robust digital preservation infrastructure, and I look forward to seeing developments in this sector in the years to come.

Iram Safdar, Sep 2019

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