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Category: Tools and Infrastructure

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Fun with File Formats

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Kate Murray, Marcus Nappier, and Liz Holdzkom of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division at the Library of Congress. Are you a file format fan? If you’re curious how to pronounce the still image format HEIF (spoiler alert: it rhymes with “beef”) or the difference between PDF/A-3 and PDF/A-4, …

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Annotation as Aesthetic: A Closing Interview with Innovator in Residence Courtney McClellan

Posted by: Leah Weinryb-Grohsgal

2021 Innovator in Residence Courtney McClellan created Speculative Annotation, an experimental browser-based application that encourages students and teachers to have conversations with historic Library of Congress items through annotation and mark-making. McClellan is a research-based artist who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. With a subject focus on speech and civic engagement, McClellan works in a range …

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a…derivative dataset!

Posted by: Eileen J. Manchester

This post describes a collaboration between LC Labs member Eileen J. Manchester and Peter DeCraene, the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow to answer the question: "what would it mean to treat a dataset as a primary source?"

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Developing a New Digital Collections Strategy at the Nation’s Library

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Joe Puccio, Collection Development Officer at the Library of Congress. Tremendous progress has been made by the Library of Congress in acquiring born-digital content as part of a coordinated strategy presented in its 2017 Digital Collecting Plan and previously reported in the Signal. With that plan now in its fifth …

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An Archivist’s Perspective on Legacy Files

Posted by: Eileen J. Manchester

In this post, 2020 Staff Innovator Chad Conrady discusses his area of expertise, emulation, which imitates older operating systems in order to open outdated or legacy files that are no longer operable with contemporary operating systems or software.