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By: Mike Ashenfelder
“Simplify, simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden. Most of us comb through a lifelong collection of personal papers and photos either when we have plenty of free time (typically in retirement) or when we have to deal with the belongings of a deceased loved one. All too often the job seems so daunting and overwhelming …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Kate Murray
Apologies to Walt Whitman for co-opting the first line of his famous poem O Captain! My Captain! but solutions for archiving email are not yet anchor’d safe and sound. Thanks to the collaborative and cooperative community working in this space, however, we’re making headway on the journey. Email archiving as a distinct research area has …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post by Julie Seifert. As part of the National Digital Stewardship Residency, I am assessing the Harvard Library Digital Repository Service, comparing it to the ISO16363 standard for trusted digital repositories (which is similar to TRAC). The standard is made up of over 100 individual metrics that address various aspects of …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Stephen Winick
If you’re curious about modern holiday beliefs and calendar customs, you might be reading or doing research about them online. Chances are, you come across some stories that the presenters claim are ancient, and reach into the pre-Christian past. One popular story you might have seen recently involves the origin of the Easter Bunny. Essentially, …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post by Nicole Contaxis. On April 12th2016, Alice Allen, editor of the Astrophysics Source Code Library, came to the National Library of Medicine to speak with National Digital Stewardship Residency participants, mentors and visitors about the importance of software as a research object and about why the ASCL is a necessary and …
Posted in: The Signal
The Great Hall in the Library of Congress Jefferson Building echoes with the hubbub of enthusiastic visitors absorbing the ornate details of its salute to knowledge and creativity. Much as I relish those sights and sounds, on a recent afternoon, I enjoyed dipping into a room just off the Great Hall to contemplate a small, …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Karen Chittenden and Woody Woodis, Cataloging Specialists in the Prints & Photographs Division: A curious form of engraved print appeared in London in the early 18th century on which multiple images appear to be randomly scattered across the surface of the paper as though they were being viewed upon …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post by Jessica Tieman. As part of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program, the 2015-2016 Washington, D.C. cohort will present their year-end symposium, entitled “Digital Frenemies: Closing the Gap in Born-Digital and Made-Digital Curation,” on Thursday, May 5th, 2016 at the National Library of Medicine. Since June, our colleague Nicole Contaxis …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post by Carmel Curtis. Over the past eight months I have been working as the National Digital Stewardship Resident at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. BAM is the oldest continually running performing arts center in the country and is home to a range of artistic expressions in dance, theater, film, and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post by Shira Peltzman from the UCLA Library. Last month Alice Prael and I gave a presentation at the annual Code4Lib conference in which I mentioned a project I’ve been working on to update the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation so that it includes a metric for access. (You can see …
Posted in: The Signal