Sending digital material

This page provides documentation about sending digital material to Distinctive Collections 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.

Digital Transfer Tool

The Digital Transfer Tool is a web app for sending small amounts of material to Distinctive Collections. The instructions for use are found in the app, on the Submission Instructions tab.

Exactly

1. Log on to VPN using the PrismaAccess VPN through the GlobalProtect software (instructions here). Change your gateway to the "GP-Lib-Gateway" in the GlobalProtect settings.
2. Follow these instructions (choose the documentation for your operating system, Windows 7 instructions will work for Windows 10) to connect to the Distinctive Collections records transfer drive. When asked for a folder or server location, use the address listed in this document. The network drive will have a folder in it with your DLC's name or acronym that you will use for the destination in step 9.
3. Download and install Exactly on your computer following the quickstart guide pages 1-3.
4. Once Exactly is open, go to the menu along the top and click Exactly> Import and select the location of the Exactly metadata template that you received from the Distinctive Collections titled - MITRecordsTransfer.xml
   
   

5. Once loaded, the template will have added fields in the Metadata section, which if not expanded already you can open by clicking the 'show' link next to that section header.

6. Fill out the fields with information about the transfer. Contact-Name should be your name and job title.
   
   

7. In the Title field above the metadata section, you should create the title as follows: the date in YYYYMMDD format followed by _TheNameofYourOffice_01, for instance 20201109_SchoolOfScience_01. This will be the name of the folder produced in the new location.
   
   1. If you have multiple transfers to complete, increase the ending number by one for each additional transfer after the first one. For instance the second transfer from the first example would be, 20201109_SchoolOfScience_02, etc. You may have multiple transfers if the total size of the transfer is large, see Info box under step 8 for more details.
   
   
8. For the Source, use the Browse button to select the location where the files currently reside.
   1. You can select individual files or full folders. Use the + symbol next to the Source field if you need to add multiple files, etc. in different locations.

   2. Exactly sometimes does not work with a path directly to a file at the top-level of a drive, such as X:\filename.txt. If selecting individual files you may need to have your files within a sub-folder and select individual files.
       

      Exactly has a limit of 150 GB per transfer. Large transfers can be very slow especially from off campus. If you have a large total size of files over 10 GB consider sending multiple transfers.

      
      

9. For the Destination, select the location using the Browse button where the files will be going to, on Windows: navigate to the drive you mounted in step 2 and select the folder with your DLC's name or acronym. The end result will be similar to the image above, for example on Windows R:\DAPER or on Macs: /Volumes/records-transfer/DAPER.
10. Click the Save button in the metadata section.
11. Click the Transfer button in the top right of the window.

12. Progress will show in the log box on the right (for large transfers there may not be any indication of progress for a while). If the transfer fails, try again or contact the Distinctive Collections staff at rmprogram@mit.edu

    Note: you cannot alter or add any files to the package after it has been transferred. If you need to do so, you will have to redo the transfer, please contact Distinctive Collections staff if that is necessary.

    
    

13. Please do NOT delete your original files until after you have received a notification from Distinctive Collections that we have successfully added the files to your department’s collection. This may take several weeks.