TDA Governing Principles

TDA Governing (Operating) Principles

• The TDA will contain born-digital materials acquired by TSLAC and materials digitized by TSLAC.

• The Records Retention Schedules and collection policy (for manuscript collections) define the collecting scope of the TDA.

• Three copies of electronic records will be maintained on different instances in geographically dispersed locations.

• A primary goal of the TDA is the preservation of the content of the record. The preservation of the original “look and feel” of the original source will be considered and reviewed on a case by case basis.

• The TDA will not be a dark archive. Objects in the repository will be available for use, although access to specific objects (or information in those objects) may be restricted to specific users according to the Texas Public Information Act (Texas Government Code Chapter 552). Preservation master files may be preserved in a dark archive, but access copies will be available to the public.

• When digitizing historic records from the TSLAC collection, originals will be kept in the collection after digitization (unless physical condition prohibits this.).

• At a minimum, the original normalized object, the most recent migrated version and the next-to-the-last migrated version will be kept. Other intermediary versions may be discarded, and in some cases all versions may need to be retained.