The following is a guest post by Jimi Jones, Digital Archivist with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. The Federal Agencies Audiovisual Working Group held a meeting on July 28, 2011. The meeting was attended by professionals from several agencies including the Library of Congress, the National Archives (NARA) and the Smithsonian. The Library of Congress …
I admit it: I’ve been prone to using the terms “digital preservation,” “digital curation” and “digital stewardship” interchangeably without thinking too hard about their origins or subtle differences. Where do these different terms come from and what do they imply? Let’s briefly explore the slightly different (though often overlapping) approaches of preservationistas, curators and stewards. …
The following is a guest post by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. We are happy to announce the full open source release of the Recollection software platform. Briefly, Recollection is a web application that enables librarians, archivists, curators, and historians to create dynamic interfaces to cultural heritage collections. If you …
The following is a guest post by Lara Lookabaugh, an intern working with the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Initiative. Librarians at University of Minnesota Make an Impact with Data Management Program http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891540-264/librarians_at_university_of_minnesota.html.csp The library has created a program called Managing Your Data, which guides researchers in the creation of data management plans. Inspired by …
As part of her closing presentation at the recent combined NDIIPP/NDSA partners meeting , Martha Anderson, Director of Program Management for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, said she has noticed a change taking place for organizations and that “no one is dealing with the tried and true anymore. The skills to innovate …
The following is a guest post by Nicholas Taylor, Information Technology Specialist for the Repository Development Group. Though presented as a unified experience, a website depends on many interrelated parts: document markup and dynamic code, assorted binary file types, software interpreters and platforms. The challenge of web archive preservation planning is to save this experience, …
Technology is the easy part of digital preservation. Actually it’s only easy relative to the other challenges that libraries, archives and other memory institutions face in keeping and serving digital content. The really hard stuff comes down to people: how staff are organized, empowered and trained to do the work. I see two basic issues …
When I meet new people and tell them that I work at the Library of Congress, the first question is usually “What do you do there?” When I explain that part of my job is to oversee a group that develops software, the reaction is often one of surprise: “What? Libraries develop software?” Yes. Yes …
The following is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, Web Archiving Team Lead at the Library of Congress. As I’ve written about before, LC takes a selective approach when archiving the web. Selection of sites is not something we automate; Recommending Officers (or, “ROs” in LC lingo), do this work. Recommending materials for addition to …
The following is a guest post by Lara Lookabaugh, an intern working with the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Initiative. UNT receives more than $800,000 dollars in funding to investigate needs in archiving research data http://untsystem.unt.edu/news/2011/August/11-08-09-arch-res-data.htm The first grant of $624,663 from IMLS is for a three-year project to create four graduate-level courses in digital …