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By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Barrie Howard, IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. This post is part of a series about digital preservation training inspired by the Library’s Digital Preservation Outreach & Education (DPOE) Program. Today I’ll focus on an exceptional individual, Jacob Nadal, who among other things is one of …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
By early December 2014, a Congressional election year, newly elected Members of Congress were preparing for public service as outgoing Members were ending their public service and attending exit briefings. At an event sponsored by the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress, the December 3rd “Life After Congress” seminar, Robin Reeder, Archivist of the …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Kalev Hannes Leetaru, Senior Fellow, George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. Portions adapted from a post for the Knight Foundation. Imagine a world where language was no longer a barrier to information access, where anyone can access real-time information from anywhere in the world in …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post from Michael Neubert, a Supervisory Digital Projects Specialist at the Library of Congress. Recently, I talked with Kristen Regina, Head of Archives and Special Collections at the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in northwest Washington and Jaime McCurry, Digital Assets Librarian, about workflows and issues for web archiving, an …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Joey Heinen, National Digital Stewardship Resident at Harvard University Library. As has been famously outlined by the Library of Congress on their website on sustainability factors for digital formats, digital material is just as susceptible to obsolescence as analog formats. Within digital preservation there are a number of …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, and Mari Nakahara, Curator of Architecture, Design, and Engineering, Prints & Photographs Division: As Washington’s beloved cherry trees are in full bloom, we are inspired to share an assortment of seasonal-themed images from the Library’s extensive holdings of Japanese woodblock prints. In Japanese …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Mike Ashenfelder
When Kathleen O’Neill talks about digital collections, she slips effortlessly into the info-tech language that software engineers, librarians, archivists and other information technology professionals use to communicate with each other. O’Neill, a senior archives specialist in the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division, speaks with authority about topics such as file signatures, hex editors and checksums even …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Kristi Finefield
In these photographs, we see two houses, both set in rural Virginia, in the mid-nineteenth century. These were the homes, a few years apart, of a retired officer of the Virginia militia named Wilmer McLean and his family. At first glance, the houses and these facts are unremarkable. But the history these walls witnessed, and …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Kalev Hannes Leetaru, Senior Fellow, George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. It is hard to imagine our world today without maps. Though not the first online mapping platform, the debut of Google Maps a decade ago profoundly reshaped the role of maps in everyday life, …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Karen Fishman
This blog post was co-written with Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. In addition to providing access to the Library’s recorded sound collection, the Recorded Sound Research Center also maintains a collection of reference books. These books include discographies, bio-discographies, directories, histories, and technical works about sound recording and radio broadcasting. …
Posted in: Now See Hear!