People gave us digital content. We have to make sure we can access the information encoded in the file and accurately return it to researchers at any time. My problem is, what do we do when we have no idea what the file are looking at is? Sometimes I prod them until UTF-8 falls out. Sometimes I go on missions to track down the original creating software. Sometimes I make a best guess, based on other things we've seen that appear the same. Sometimes we try and reverse engineer the data and turn a binary 'blob' into a working file. Very occasionally they go in a pile of things that have stumped me :( I will briefly describe our current practices and then show a few file types where we literally have no idea wtf to do with them. Then you can tell me how you would figure it out…