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By: Kristi Finefield
Clearly the ladies below are determined to get in their game of Mah-Jongg! A photographer for the National Photo Company snapped a photo of this inventive method of taking a game on the go while still enjoying a cooling dip in the water: A recent blog post about board games focused on the games themselves, …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Kate Murray
Each January, my family picks out a new wall calendar to hang in our kitchen. Its main appeal these days is nostalgic decoration since we no longer use it to write down our appointments or important dates. Like many people, we now rely on electronic calendar and scheduling tools built into personal information manager software …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
How are researchers and scholars going to make use of born-digital primary sources? It’s an open question which many working in digital preservation are interested in. As part of the NDSA innovation working group’s ongoing Insights interview series I am excited to talk with Zach Whalen, an english professor at the University of Mary Washington, …
Posted in: The Signal
George Washington delivered the country’s first inaugural address 225 years ago on April 30th, 1789. Just as the legends pertaining to Washington have grown and persisted since his lifetime, so has the iconography. Throughout the years, artists have provided their own conceptions of the first presidential inauguration, as in this print published in 1849, which …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Abbey Potter
For someone who thinks about web archiving almost every day it’s sometimes hard to explain to people outside the digital library community why archiving web sites is worth doing. “They archive themselves,” some say. “Why would you want to save what’s on the Internet?” they wonder. Instead of launching into explanations about cultural heritage, dynamic …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Margo Padilla, Program Manager for NDSR-NY. With a month remaining in the inaugural term of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program, the cohort is busy putting the finishing touches on projects, participating in closing program events and planning future endeavors. Since arriving in Washington DC last September, residents …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
Seventy-five years ago, the Library opened a second building on Capitol Hill to house its growing collections. With a collection of more than 3.5 million items, former Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam reported to Congress in 1926 that the nearly completed bookstack “will not be likely to take care of the accessions beyond the coming …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Mike Ashenfelder
Cinda May, a key organizer of the Personal Digital Archiving 2014 conference, is one of a growing number of information professionals helping to digitally preserve personal and community history. May, chair of Special Collections at Indiana State University Library, is a co-creator of the Wabash Valley Visions & Voices Digital Memory Project and, as such, she …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Andrea Fox, Web Archiving Intern at the Library of Congress. When Abbie Grotke of Web Archiving took me on for an internship, I thought well of myself for a few minutes until realizing I had no clue what Web Archiving was or what it wanted from me. Abbie …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
What does the history of the MP3 format mean for those interested in ensuring long-term access to our digital cultural heritage? In this installment of the NDSA’s Insights interview series I talk with historian Jonathan Sterne about his book MP3: The Meaning of a Format. You can read the introduction to his book, titled “Format …
Posted in: The Signal