Top of page
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
By: Stephen Winick
The following is a guest post by Nancy Groce, Senior Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center. It originated as opening remarks for the forum Coffeehouses: Folk Music, Culture, and Counterculture, which was held last week in the Library’s Montpelier Room. Webcasts of the event will eventually be added to the Library’s website and accessible …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Trevor Owens
Continuing the insights interview series, I’m excited to share this conversation with Meg Phillips, External Affairs Liaison at the National Archives and Records Administration. A few years back we “un-chaired” CURATEcamp Processing: Processing Data/Processing Collections together. Meg wrote a guest post reflecting on that event for the Signal titled More Product, Less Process for Born-Digital …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Erica Titkemeyer, National Digital Stewardship Resident at the Smithsonian Institution Archives As the National Digital Stewardship Resident placed within the Smithsonian Institution Archives I have been tasked with identifying the specialized digital curation requirements for time‐based media art (TBMA). I typically use this definition to best describe TBMA (also referred to here as digital media art): artwork containing …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jennifer Gavin
The Library of Congress National Book Festival, as you’ve no doubt heard, is going to a new place in 2014 — the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. — on Saturday, Aug. 30 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. As always, it will be free and open to the public, courtesy of the …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Erin Allen
This article, written by Susan Reyburn, writer-editor in the Publishing Office at the Library of Congress, is featured in the March-April 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, now available for download here. You can also view the archives of the Library’s former publication from 1993 to 2011. As major league baseball prepared to …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Stephen Winick
In my last post, I discussed the more serious side of songs about Noah’s ark. As I mentioned, though, there are other songs too, often with more celebratory messages–or even silly ones. We’ll look at some of those Noah songs in this post. Celebratory songs tend to focus on the joy felt by Noah when …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Susan Manus
The April 2014 Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter (pdf) is now available! In this issue: Where are the Born Digital Archives Test Data Sets? Fixity Data in Sound and Moving Image Files Managing a Library of Congress Worth of Data Personal Digital Archiving: The Basics of Scanning New NDSA Report: Geospatial Data Stewardship Online …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Megan Harris
In a letter dated November 16, 1918, an Army Private First Class stationed near Verdun, France, wrote to his mother, Dear Mother: By firelight on the fought-over ground of this stricken country I pause to rush word to you of my safety + well being. The last three weeks were terrible + of them I …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Mike Ashenfelder
This post is part of our ongoing NDSA innovation group’s Insights interview series. Scientific data is the biggest of the “big data.” In fact, research data and increased complexity and volume of data are two of the challenges addressed by the National Agenda for Digital Stewardship. To find out more about the data preservation and …
Posted in: The Signal