XAVI DANTO
PROJECTS
In addition to my MSLIS Portfolio, I wanted to highlight some projects that I’ve done over the past few years that fall outside of the boundaries of that format. I’ll continue to update this as new projects arise in my professional life.
SHAPE EXPRESSIONS FOR RHIZOME
This project, completed during an internship at Rhizome, involved developing Shape Expressions (ShEx) for Rhisome’s ArtBase: a Wikibase detailing describing a historically renowned and definitive collection of net art and the iterations that define their conceptual makeup. Over the course of the internship, I translated Rhizome’s existing data entry guidelines into 23 machine-readable EntitySchemas to validate how artworks, artists, artifacts, and variants are structured in the organization’s Wikibase instance, establishing a framework for ensuring data quality and consistency across the archive that can be programmatically applied.The work required comprehensive understanding of semantic web technologies, particularly RDF data structures and validation protocols. Likewise, I created detailed schemas for complex entities, carefully defining properties, value constraints, and cardinalities that reflect the unique requirements of preserving born-digital art. Each schema needed to account for both current data entry practices and future automation goals, including API integration and automated validation workflows. The project also involved extensive documentation of ShEx syntax and best practices, navigating implementation challenges across multiple validation tools (ShEx2, rudof, RDF Shape), and testing schemas against actual ArtBase data to ensure they accurately reflected institutional needs. This research addresses critical challenges in digital preservation and description, particularly how cultural heritage organizations can maintain complex digital artworks as coherent, well-documented collections over time, while providing documentation that can guide other institutions implementing similar validation systems for their linked data infrastructures.
🔗 Project Documentation
OPTICAL DISC REFORMATTING FOR PRATT INSTITUTE’S ARCHIVES
This project, completed throughout the Summer of 2025 as a Graduate Assistant at the Pratt Institute Archives, involved developing comprehensive workflows for optical media preservation and digital processing. Over the course of this project, I created detailed documentation for making SIPs and AIPs from CDs and DVDs, including bash scripts for automating directory creation, file transfers using rsync and ddrescue, and disk imaging with redumper for damaged media. The work required extensive troubleshooting of technical challenges including end sector errors, unmountable HFS partitions, and filesystem compatibility issues across different optical media formats (CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD-R, etc.).
The project involved systematic processing of optical media collections through multiple stages: physical inspection and rehousing, metadata capture, content transfer, bag creation and validation, and integration with ArchivesSpace/JSTOR for researcher access. I developed scripts that automated repetitive tasks while building in manual checkpoints for quality control, ensuring data integrity throughout the preservation workflow. Each disc required careful evaluation to determine the appropriate transfer method—whether direct file copying, disk imaging, or specialized recovery techniques using HFSUtils for legacy Macintosh filesystems. The documentation also addresses post-transfer processing including duplicate identification using Brunnhilde, file format normalization with ffmpeg and ImageMagick, and PII scanning to determine appropriate access restrictions. This comprehensive approach ensures long-term preservation of born-digital materials while maintaining original context and establishing standardized procedures that can be replicated across different archival collections, contributing to broader conversations around sustainable digital preservation practices in cultural heritage institutions.
Although my workflow is internal, below are a list of resources I’d encourage anyone to review if building a similar project:
🔗 An Optical Media Preservation Strategy for New York University’s Fales Library & Special Collections
🔗 West Virginia and Regional History Center: Digital Archives Documentation
🔗 University of Michigan: Optical Disk File Transfer Manual
🔗 Rockefeller Archive Center: Digital Media Transfer Workflow
🔗 NYPL AMI Preservation Documentation Portal
🔗 NYPL Digital Archives Documentation
🔗 Delivering Archives and Digital Objects: a Conceptual Model (DadoCM) - DRAFT
🔗 The Digital Preservation Framework as Linked Open Data
🔗 twoBit Digital Preservation Bash Script Library
🔗 Redump Wiki
🔗 Born Digital Archival Description Guidelines: List of Elements
🔗 The Irish Film Institute Scripts
🔗 Bash Cheat Sheet
🔗 Script Ahoy
🔗 The Sourcecaster
🔗 Micropops
🔗 QEMU QED
🔗 ffmprovisr