SI 667 Guides (Winter 2026) on SI 667 - Winter 2026

Installing & Running Brunnhilde on Windows

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Brunnhilde is a companion tool to Siegfried, and Brunnhilde is very useful in creating reports from the inventory and file characterization data that Siegfried creates. While perhaps not essential, it is at this time a highly useful tool that can create reports that are useful for overall analysis of the files you’re working with, as well as a report to keep with the files as useful technical and provenance metadata.

Installation Step-By-Step

Before you install Brunnhilde, you must have Python 3 installed and running. This is likely ready to go if you have completed SI 506. If not, you may need to do that first. Instructions for setting up Python 3 can be found here and here. If you prefer to run in a virtual environment, you can also do that. Once Python 3 is ready, proceed to the next step.
Open up Visual Studio Code, and open a new Terminal pane there.
At the terminal prompt, you can use the pip command to install Brunnhilde: pip install brunnhilde.
If this doesn’t work, you can try running pip as a module thus: $ python -m pip isntall brunnhilde.
Now, you can call brunnhilde with the command brunnhilde.py [arguments] as you would other python programs.
Note that you may need to run this as a “module”, something like this:
python -m brunnhilde [arguments]

Installing Siegfried (1.11.4) on Windows (11)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Siegfried is a tool that you can use to characterize files, which means that it will assist in creating information about the kinds of files in a given location, their fixity, and other basic preservation information. You can also use it to link file type characterizations to the major file type registries, including the PUID (PRONOM Unique Identifier), FDD (Library of Congress Format Description Documents), and MIME Types (Multipurpose Internet Media Extensions, sometimes called Media Types). The goal of this activity is to create shared, reliable, and documented file format designations, when possible, so that you know what kind of stored digital information your collection has in it.

Running Siegfried & Brunnhilde

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This page contains the instructions for running tools that can help with file reporting. These are useful tools that can create some of the preservation description information, which might accompany an information package, and to create technical information that can be used for tracking file integrity and duplication.

Setup

The following sections show how to get set up to run the file reporting tools.

Sample Files

All of the activities will use the course’s sample files, which you should have previously downloaded during class in January. If you didn’t download them, have lost those files, or want a new copy, they are located in the course github repository, and you can download them all directly as a zip file at https://github.com/morskyjezek/si667-2026. Unzip that folder somewhere on your computer, for example in your Desktop or Documents folder. This should result in a folder named si667-2026-main, which will match the demonstrations below. (Nota bene: the screencasts below were recorded in 2023 and 2024, so some of the sections in the videos may show those years in its name, but assume any paths or other references should be to 2026.)

Shell 1: Navigation and Inspection

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This guide is generally adapted to working in a UNIX environment using the bash shell, but there are various nods to Mac and Windows, which have some differences. Demonstrations during class assume use of Mac OS/Unix style terminal commands. However, commands for both unix and windows environments are offered below. See the linked resources at the bottom for greater detail.

Description

This activity aims to present basic skills for using the “command line,” a text-based system for working with the operating system and files on most laptop and dekstop computers (including MacOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems). A digital curator should have a basic level of comfort and competence with this interface for a few reasons: most importantly, the command line is an efficient and powerful environment that allows for basic creation of batch operations and simple scripts; in addition, some tools require operation from the command line. While not immediately intuitive, the command line and shell programs offer many quick and efficient ways to perform some actions, such as generating basic information about files and systems.