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By: Susan Manus
For many organizations that are just starting to tackle digital preservation, it can be a daunting challenge – and particularly difficult to figure out the first steps to take. Education and training may be the best starting point, creating and expanding the expertise available to handle this kind of challenge. The Digital Preservation Outreach and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Kate Murray
In a previous blog post, the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group announced the opening of a survey to rank issues in preserving video collections. The survey closed on August 2, 2014 and while there’s work ahead to analyze the results and develop action plans, we can share some preliminary findings. We purposely cast a …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
Preserving and managing research data is a significant concern for scientists and staff at research libraries. With that noted, many likely don’t realize the length of time in which valuable scientific data has accrued on a range of media in research settings. That is, data management often needs to be both backward- and forward-looking, considering …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Chris Adams from the Repository Development Center at the Library of Congress, the technical lead for the World Digital Library. Preservation is usually about maintaining as much information as possible for the future but access requires us to balance factors like image quality against file size and design …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Amanda Smith
I grew up in the foothills of North Carolina in an area where music styles and lyrics known to the Southern Appalachians trickled down and nestled in my bones. In writing about the music culture of the Blue Ridge Mountains, what would a discussion of NC mountain music be without the mention of legendary guitar …
Posted in: NLS Music Notes
The following is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints & Photographs Division. The Library of Congress has long collected cartoon art and illustration, including editorial cartoon and comic strip drawings. In the last fifteen years, we’ve expanded the scope to include original drawings for alternative comics, …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Mike Ashenfelder
At the 2014 Society of American Archivists meeting, the CAD/BIM Taskforce held a session titled “Frameworks for the Discussion of Architectural Digital Data” to consider the daunting matter of archiving computer-aided design and Building Information Modelling files. This was the latest evidence that — despite some progress in standards and file exchange — the digital preservationist …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
Every day, people from around the world upload photos to share on a range of social media sites and web applications. The results are astounding; collections of billions of digital photographs are now stored and managed by several companies and organizations. In this context, Yahoo Labs recently announced that they were making a data set …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Stephen Winick
August 22 is an important date to folklore fans. It is, in fact, the anniversary of the first appearance of the (originally hyphenated) word “Folk-Lore” in print. The medium was a letter to the editor of the Athenæum, a scholarly journal, and the author was William John Thoms, although he wrote the letter under his …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Bryan Cornell
Kachank? That’s the sound that signals summer’s end as returning students slam locker doors while swarming high school corridors, yelling, jostling and creating general chaos. Nevertheless, in the windy, rainy and icy days ahead, the Library of Congress National Jukebox can provide you many songs that evoke summers past and prepare you to face the coming school (or …
Posted in: Now See Hear!