Niamh Murphy is a Digital Archivist with the Royal Dublin Society.
In our community, optical media imaging is an essential yet challenging task to undertake. Despite the plentiful documentation available in support of this topic, establishing a workflow can leave you questioning: Where do I begin?
In my current role with the Royal Dublin Society, I embarked on the task of developing a workflow tailored to the needs of our optical media collections. The DVD collection, in particular, piqued my interest due to its unique archival content.
Taking into account our collections, as well as limitations posed by staffing and resources, I began investigating the most appropriate software to facilitate this process.
I received very welcome advice from Kieran O’Leary of the National Library of Ireland, who guided me towards journal articles, a number of institutional guides, and an insightful DPC blog post that he wrote on the subject.
An understanding of our requirements, coupled with this research led me to IsoBuster, IROMLAB and ultimately IROMSGL.
The following guide provides step-by-step instructions on the installation of these tools, and a brief overview of their purpose and usage. However, before delving into any specifics, it’s worth providing a brief description for each:
IsoBuster serves as a versatile data recovery and imaging tool, offering support for various media types such as CD/DVD, Blu-ray & HD DVD, Hard Drives, SSD, USB flash drives, ZIP drives, and more.
IROMLAB (Image and Rip Optical Media Like A Boss) is an open-source preservation tool which functions as a wrapper for several tools, including IsoBuster, dBpoweramp, cd-info, shntool, and flac and generates an output which satisfies archival requirements.
However, it requires the use of a robot, specifically the Nimbie disc autoloader which is neither available or necessary within this context.
This is where IROMSGL comes into play. IROMSGL is the single disc version of IROMLAB, designed to operate without a disc robot. This tool provides all of the benefits of IROMLAB, without the expense of a Nimbie.
The only downside? IROMSGL is difficult to install. In the absence of instructions, through trial and error, I documented the process of installing this tool. The following guide captures each step, with the hope that it also proves beneficial to the wider community.
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