Archival Processes and Preservation for ArcGIS Materials

[ShareUser]

Hello everyone -

I'm not sure of the best place to post this - if there is a better forum to post it on let me know and I can move it!

At the college I work at, IT and Library is almost completely merged into the same department. IT offices are also housed in the Library (so I also live in the library for the most part). 

One thing we've been working on is to nail down a good process for the preservation of ArcGIS materials. This could be anything - print maps, digital maps, StoryMaps - physical print materials are not as big of a deal to plan for as digital maps and StoryMaps.

• Not just storing materials for long-term projects, but more from a library services perspective. We actually get quite a bit of traffic with virtual exhibits. St. Olaf Virtual Exhibits

I'm curious if there is anyone out there that also works with these types of projects! Do you have a process that you use to transfer ownership, store, or process digital materials produced by faculty, students, staff or other users for preservation?

For our current archival process - we transfer projects to a library collections ArcGIS Online group and make sure that the materials are transferred to an account that will be long term. We also have a form that individuals sign to ensure that we have rights to use the materials. So far it's worked okay, but I'm just curious if anyone else as their own process.

• Our data retention policy is 3 years - if someone graduates or leaves the college, we keep their data for 3 years and then everything is deleted. So we try to transferred ownership to someone in the library to make sure the content is not lost. We don't permit service accounts, so it has to be an actual person (in this case, the special collections librarian)

Thank you and I hope everyone is doing well!

[ShareUser]

Hi @SaraJL—this is a great question! Since it's fairly general and users from a variety of fields may have useful input, our GIS Life Discussions Board is a fine place for this post. I've also gone ahead and shared a copy of it to our Higher Education Questions Board, where there may be some relevant overlap. Both posts will keep comments synced so that Esri Community Members can converse with you and each other across either one. All the best!

[ShareUser]

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[SaraJL]

Hello Khalil - 

Public accounts don't work for preservation purposes because there isn't a way for an administrator to maintain the content! Once the public account is deactivated, or something happens to it that causes it to lose credits, etc - the host institution won't have a way to manage it, pass ownership, or make sure that the content stays active.

In terms of preservation - this would have to include materials that need long-term sustainability and can be potentially managed by multiple users (so an ArcGIS Online group, etc.). 

There is also no way to switch between an ArcGIS organization (SAML organization) account to an ArcGIS public account because these are 2 separate accounts. Unless that has changed recently - please share the documentation if you happen to know something different!

[ShareUser]

Hello!

Thank you for your response and time. My message was just in regard to students GIS’s documents neither archive process nor reservation/disposal of documents by the university. It is college and university that archives and preserve the materials relating to a specific issue.

There is option in ArcGIS Online to switch between ArcGIS Public Account and ArcGIS Online account, if we do not have this option we would not be able to transfer documents from one to another. No doubt that both SAML and OAuth are SSO, but SAML authenticates the user identity to a service while OAuth authorize the user to access resources as well.

 If a college or university wants to archive and preserve the students’ documents they have to create a student’s portal. As you knew that the portal is not like a website and its content are available for specific users.

Best,

Khalil

[ElizabethZizzamia1]

Hello,

We use the ArcGIS Assistant tool to transfer content to public accounts or the student's new org account. There are limitations but we've had a lot of success.

https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/arcgis-assistant-beta-tool-for-managing-content/ba-p/10...

https://guide.assistant.esri-ps.com/docs/ https://assistant.esri-ps.com

Beth Zizzamia (she/her/hers)
GIS Operations Manager
Spatial Analysis Lab
University of Richmond
Department of Geography, Environment and Sustainability
https://sal-urichmond.hub.arcgis.com/

[ShareUser]

I think there might be a little confusion on the question!

I don't need troubleshooting help with account transferring - we just transfer ownership to accounts for someone else at the university. This nice part about this process is that is doesn't require a portal - someone just needs admin level permissions. It also does not require the linking of multiple accounts.

We typically do this by going into the user's account, click on the item (example: a web map) and then you can use Change owner to anyone in the organization. 

Approaching this situation - I am thinking about this in a very similar fashion to if someone has books or print materials they want to donate to a library for others to read! Or if they have artifacts to donate to a museum collection to be preserved over time.

My main question is just about what people do for data retention, long-term storage of ArcGIS materials!  How do you maintain the projects to make sure that everything stays active (free of broken links, 100% accessible to the public, no sharing restrictions, etc.) and have long-term sustainability?

Does anyone currently work with a college library as well for the preservation of digital materials?

Thank you!

Sara