BitCurator

The BitCurator Environment is an Ubuntu Linux distribution geared to the needs of archivists and librarians. It includes a suite of open source digital forensics and data analysis tools to help collecting institutions process born-digital materials.
Homepage:	http://bitcurator.net/
License:	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Platforms:	Ubuntu-Linux
Function:	File Management,Fixity,Metadata Extraction,Metadata Processing,Quality Assurance,Validation,Workflow
Appears in COW:	Archival Forensics workflow (storage media deposit), Digital archiving workflow (high-level), Flashback project - optical media imaging workflow

Description

The BitCurator Environment is an Ubuntu Linux distribution geared to the needs of archivists and librarians. It includes a suite of open source digital forensics and data analysis tools to help with collecting institutions process born-digital materials.

The tasks that have been written include:

• Creating forensic disk images: Disk images packaged with metadata about devices, file systems, and the creation process.

• Analyzing files and file systems: View details on file system contents from a wide variety of file systems.

• Extracting file system metadata: File system metadata is a critical link in the chain of custody and in records of provenance.

• Identifying sensitive information: Locate private and sensitive information on digital media and prepare materials for access.

• Locating and remove duplicate files: Know what files to keep and what can be discarded.

User Experiences

• Alice Prael and Amy Wickner, "Getting to Know FRED," Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, October 9, 2015

• Sam Meister and Alexandra Chassanoff, "Integrating Digital Forensics Techniques into Curatorial Tasks: A Case Study," International Journal of Digital Curation 9, no. 2 (2014): 6-16.

• Workflows - BitCurator Consortium

Development Activity

The BitCurator environment was originally developed through a series of projects (2011-2014) led by the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (SILS) and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since 2014, the software has been maintained by the BitCurator Consortium.

BitCurator software is now housed in a set of repositories on GitHub.

File an Issue

The BitCurator Consortium maintains a JIRA instance to respond to software and environment issues outside of GitHub.

Release Process and Schedule

Visit the Release Process and Schedule page for additional information on how the Consortium manages feature updates, bugfixes, and release scheduling.

Release and Activity Feed

https://github.com/bitcurator/commits/master.atom