P. Zaphiris et al. (Eds.): TPDL 2012, LNCS 7489, pp. 335–344, 2012. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 A Unique Arrangement: Organizing Collections for Digital Libraries, Archives, and Repositories Jeff Crow, Luis Francisco-Revilla, April Norris, Shilpa Shukla, and Ciaran B. Trace School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX, USA {jcrow,revilla,anorris,shilpa,cbtrace}@ischool.utexas.edu Abstract. Digital libraries increasingly host collections that are archival in na- ture, and contain digitized and born-digital materials. In order to preserve the evidentiary value of these materials, the collection organization must capture the general context and preserve the relationships among objects. Archival processing is a well-established method for organizing collections this way. However, the current archival workflow leads to artificial boundaries between materials and delays in getting digitized content online because physical and born-digital materials are processed independently, and digitized materials not at all. In response, this work explores the approach of processing materials in a digitized form using a large multi-touch table. This alternative workflow pro- vides the first step towards integrating the archival processing of digital and physical materials, and can expedite the process of making the materials availa- ble online. However, this approach demands high quality digitization and re- quires that archivists perform additional tasks like matching multi-sided, multi- paged documents. Keywords: Multi-touch, archival processing, digitized materials. 1 Introduction The core mission of digital libraries is to facilitate the use of the information that they host. This mission is challenging because people create and use information in increa- singly different ways. Furthermore, as technology evolves, digital objects increase in complexity and their file formats change. This creates dependencies on legacy hard- ware and software [1]. Consequently, researchers have been investigating how to provide long-term access [1], storage, and preservation [2, 3] of digital objects. Many of these solutions address the issue at object-level (e.g., creating smart digital objects that can automatically copy themselves [4]). However, focusing on the long-term use of these objects requires rethinking how collections are organized and managed as a whole. Digital libraries and archives host innumerable digital objects of significant scien- tific, legal, economic, cultural, and historic value [1]. Currently, many digital libraries are built on the premise that these objects can be organized and made accessible as independent units. This makes sense when the items (e.g., books and journals) each