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							The Transgender Archives                                                                                         Memo

                                                                                           To: Asher Jackson
                                                                                        From: Sarah Barton, Jaime Janda, Dan Zavala,
                                                                                              and Eli Zoller
                                                                                         Date: April 22, 2012
                                                                                           Re: Data Management Plan



The Transgender Archives are meant to collect, preserve, and make accessible digital content, which describe the transgender
experience and more specifically, the transition process. The project hopes to explore the experiences of transgender men and
women to facilitate a broader understanding of the issues faced daily by this community. The archives will primarily include oral
histories in which participants detail their personal experiences, both past and present. The archives intend to collect materials from
individuals across a wide variety of ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Supplemental textual transcripts for each oral history
recorded will be included for clarification, broader distribution, and preservation purposes. Indeed, the archives are primarily an oral
history project in which an estimated ten to twenty audio interviews will be collected, but it is also meant to be a living collection in
which future participants can continue to submit their own oral histories after the initial collection has been submitted to an archival
repository.

An estimated timeline for the project includes six months for preparation, six months for data collection, and six months for
finalization. The preparation process will include participating in promotion, advertisement, and outreach to gather participants;
securing donations, grants, and volunteers for the project; and finalizing donor agreements. The data collection process will include
interviewing ten to twenty participants; ensuring oral histories, textual transcripts, and metadata are efficiently recorded, preserved,
and stored; and securing pertinent electronic documentation. The finalization process will include preparing copies of the digital
content for preservation, storage, and usage; preparing the submission information package for deposit; and ensuring the chosen
archival repository receives the documentation necessary to make the digital content accessible.

The archives understand the importance of advertisement, promotion, and outreach to disseminate information about the project,
gather participants for the project, and bring awareness to the project’s designated community, which includes the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender community, researchers, and the general public as well. Signs, flyers, and pamphlets will be distributed at
different institutions, which include The History Project, Fenway Health, and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.
Additional outreach for the younger community will include signs at other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender affiliated
organizations, establishments, and institutions, such as youth groups (e.g., The Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender
Youth, and Friends of GLBT Youth, Inc.) and university affiliated groups in the Boston area.

Four volunteer-based staff positions have been created to ensure the success of the project, which include the project manager, the
junior project manager, the interviewer, and the project assistant. The project manager is responsible for overseeing the entire
project, which includes acquiring grants and donations, obtaining and allocating materials, implementing deadlines, and maintaining
the project’s mission throughout its execution. The junior project manager is responsible for ensuring the quality and proper
handling of data submissions, training the interviewer and project assistant, and reformatting, storing, and backing up the data
collected. The interviewer is responsible for all aspects of the interviews performed, which includes acquiring data, adding and
maintaining applicable metadata, and submitting this information to the junior project manager. The project assistant is responsible
for providing and retaining all pertinent documentation, which includes consent forms, project notes, and interview transcriptions.

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In addition, interns and volunteers interested in the project will be able to participate in the data collection process and engage in
the project’s digital workflow.

In order to implement the project a number of materials are required. The software and hardware necessary to implement each oral
history interview includes a laptop, a microphone, Sony Acid Pro 7, and X2X, which will serve as an MP3 to FLAC converter. The
software necessary to transcribe the interviews, provide and create the electronic documents aforementioned, and disseminate the
metadata collected includes OpenOffice and Oxygen to XML Editor. Four storage locations have been identified to house the data
collected until the project is completed. These storage locations include the laptop’s local hard drive, the Project Manager’s personal
hard drive, an external hard drive, and Dropbox, which will serve as a cloud storage system. To ensure the security of the data
collected throughout the project, Norton 360™ Version 6.0 is necessary. Once the project is completed, TarPit will be used to
encapsulate the data collected into a tarball for submission to the archival repository.

The data collected will include ten to twenty oral histories, their corresponding textual transcripts, and supplemental metadata; the
oral histories and textual transcripts in particular will be maintained in multiple formats for preservation and presentation purposes
to facilitate interoperability between the archives and online users. The oral histories collected will be preserved as FLACs and
provided online as MP3s. The textual transcripts will be preserved as ODTs and provided online as PDFs. The supplemental metadata
will include the following: administrative information about donations, content transfers, and rights; technical information about the
materials used to collect and access data; and descriptive information about creator, subject, etc. Spreadsheets used to organize
particular sets of metadata will be maintained as ODFs, and the descriptive metadata will be maintained in XML with Dublin Core
standards to facilitate dissemination, interoperability, and retrieval.

In addition, a number of electronic documents, which may be characterized as administrative, technical, or descriptive metadata,
will be included. These documents include such forms as the Project Master Log, the Artifact and Archival Inventory List, and the
Biographical and Interview Information Forms. The archives further understand the importance of donor privacy and copyright
information. Each participant from whom an oral history is collected will be asked to fill out and sign an Oral History Donor Form,
which stipulates any restrictions placed on the audio interview collected and establishes copyright; more specifically, the Oral
History Donor Form explicitly determines whether participants’ personal information will be published and establishes that the
archival repository where the collection is ultimately submitted will hold complete copyright of the materials.

The estimated budget for the project is approximately $3,000, which includes the software, hardware, and subsequent resources
necessary to collect, appraise, and prepare the data collected for submission to an archival repository. Resources will be allocated to
ensure the materials required are acquired and maintained efficiently. For a breakdown of expenditures, see Appendix A. Funding
for the project has been considered and grant opportunities have been researched. The National Endowment for the Humanities has
several grants for projects in which further interest in the humanities is fostered. As archives, which are designed to shed light on an
underrepresented community and expand the public’s knowledge, the project should qualify for the grant. The Preservation Grant
for Small Institutions provides funding for repositories planning to implement a project, which displays a topic of the humanities and
emphasizes the importance of preservation. Other funding options include personal contributions from community donors.

After the project has been completed, the data collected will be submitted to The History Project as a Submission Information
Package. The application TarPit will be used to encapsulate the data collected into a tarball, which will also include information
about access, restrictions, and copyright. The History Project will retain rights to the data submitted, and ensure the data’s
preservation and access to the archives’ designated community.

Concerns have been identified, which may affect preparation, data collection, or finalization of the project. Participants may decide
to retract their decision to provide their oral history, which is the reason why the quota for the project has been estimated at ten to
twenty oral histories. From this concern, issues with privacy arise. Participants who follow through with their decision may be
worried their personal information may be disclosed. Indeed, some participants may desire to share their oral histories, but may not
necessarily identify as transgender. For this reason, it is important to be explicit with participants about privacy, restrictions, and
copyright. Security is another pivotal concern as well. Multiple copies of the data collected will be maintained to ensure it is securely
deposited to The History Project after the project has been finalized.


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Appendix A

Total Budget: $3,000
Budget Allocation: (See table below)

                    Item                                   *Cost
Laptop (with recommended upgrade)                                  $1,224.99
Microphone                                                            $28.94
Sony Acid Pro 7                                                      $269.99
X2X                                                                    $0.00
OpenOffice                                                             $0.00
Oxygen to XML Editor (One Academic License)                              $64
External Hard Drive                                                  $127.25
Dropbox (2-year subscription for 50 GB)                                 $400
Norton 360™ Version 6.0 (2-year download)                            $154.99
TarPit                                                                 $0.00
                                                          **Total: $2,270.16
                                               ***Remaining Budget: $729.84

*Prices are subject to change.
**Subtotal does not account for possible taxes placed on specified materials.
***Remaining budget will be used for unforeseen expenses, which may arise through the project.




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