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This page provides documentation about sending digital material to Distinctive Collections (DDC) from the creators or donors of the material. For more information, see the donate digital material page on Distinctive Collection's webpage. As mentioned on that webpage, these steps are only to be undertaken once you have been approved by Distinctive Collections staff. DDC will guide you towards using one of the options described below depending on the size and content of your transfer.

Archives Transfer Tool (ATT)

The Archives Transfer Tool currently exists as a Dropbox shared folder. Once you have been in contact with Distinctive Collections (DDC) and have created a submission agreement, we will determine the best transfer method for you. If ATT is decided on as the best option, you will be added to a shared folder to transfer files for yourself, DLC, etc.

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• DO need to have an active MIT kerberos account and have logged in at least once to the Dropbox web interface

• Do NOT need to install or use the Dropbox application – this is 100% browser based. Although you can use the Dropbox app if you prefer. Some users have reported the desktop app faster at uploading than the browser.

Once you are logged in, follow these steps:

1. Access the /ArchivesTransfer/ folder in Dropbox using this URL.
2. Double-click the subfolder which DDC has created for your transfer.
3. You will see two files already there:
   1. default_metadata.json: a file set up by DDC that you don't need to change. It has some general metadata for any file that might be uploaded to this folder. Leave this file in place.
   2. sample_csv

      [filename].csv: a CSV file with a name related to your group that can be used as a template for providing additional metadata, as described in the section below.

4. To upload files, you can either:

   1. Drag and drop the file(s) from your computer into the browser window. If you have many files or nested folders, zip them up to either one zip file or multiple zip files if one zip file will be too large.

   2. Or Click the “Upload or drop” button in the upper left corner and then choose File from the list of options. This will open a file browser where  you can go find the file to upload from your computer. If using the file browser, select the file (or files) and click the OK button.

      Warning
      Important: Do not create or upload any subfolders inside of this folder! You can only upload files to the root of this folder. If you have folders, you can zip up all your files or separately zip the top-level folders and upload the zip files.

5. Proceed to the next section to provide some basic metadata about the content you are transferring.

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• filename is the exact name of the file in the Dropbox folder, for instance: MyRecords.docx or Minutes2014-2015.zip

• beginning_year is the beginning date of the files you are transferring (a four-digit year)

• ending_year is the latest date of the files you are transferring (a four-digit year)

• description is the full text description of the file you are transferring (with no commas in the description)

To provide this metadata,

1. Download the sample_csv.csv file to your workstation

2. Rename it with an appropriate name for the set of files it is describing

3. Using an editor (Excel, Notepad++, BBEdit, etc…) add one row for each file

4. Remove the example row, the one containing, FC_155 Oct_Nov 2018.pdf  in the first column.
5. Fill out the information for the columns listed above: filename, beginning_year, ending_year, description

6. Save the updated CSV as a .csv formatted file

7. Upload the updated CSV to the Dropbox folder (so that it lives alongside the files that you uploaded)

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When you are finished with your upload (of one file or of a collection of files) and the upload of the metadata CSV file, send an email to DDC to let them know that content is ready and give them the name of the CSV file that contains the list of files and associated metadata!.

DART

DART is a desktop app that allows for verifiable data transfers. Once you have been in contact with Distinctive Collections (DDC) and have created a submission agreement, we will determine the best transfer method for you. If ATT is decided on as the best option, you will be added to a network folder to transfer files for yourself, DLC, etc. The steps below describe how to connect to that drive, download DART, and use it to transfer files to DDC.

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