In “Open-Sourcing MoMA’s Digital Vault,” Ben Fino-Radin (Museum of Modern Art) explains the process and rationale behind the creation of Binder, the museum’s new open-source software for “overseeing and managing the active preservation of digital collections.” Binder was developed in conjunction with Artefactual Systems, and designed for use alongside Archivematica and Arkivum.
What is good for preservation is not always a boon to access or management. Therefore, before packages [created by Archivematica] are sent to “the warehouse” [Arkivum], Binder sifts through them, indexes their contents, and stores what it finds in a database that is built to be very good at queries across large sets of data. Binder allows us to see the bigger picture in our collection.
Binder is available on GitHub and features a REST API. A video introduction to the tool is also available.
