A Digital Object in ArchivesSpace is an instance type that points to a digital manifestation of an archival item or file. For example, a digitized version of a photographic print. ArchivesSpace does not host the digitized content, it only points to it with a URL - the digitized content must be hosted elsewhere such as on ContentDM or our Islandora repository. If the digitized content isn't available on a publicly-accessible website you can still use a Digital Object to indicate that digital files exist in a collection, or that physical content in a collection has been digitized.
Digital objects can exist independently of a collection (resource record) or as part of a collection within the finding aid.
Follow these steps to create a digital object within a collection finding aid:
Example of an item in Donald MacDonald's papers that has a physical item and a digitized version:
Example of an item in Donald MacDonald's papers that has a physical item (a compact disc) and the files on the cd have been copied to the shared departmental drive:
Examples of entire collections of only digital objects (no physical files received)
Digital Object tutorial video: ArchivesSpace Digital Objects Module Training