Top of page
By: Kate Murray
This blog post is co-authored by Carl Fleischhauer, Project Manager, Digital Initiatives, Library of Congress. People who manage audio and video files over time, do create fixity data, aka hash values or checksums, to help monitor the condition of those files in storage and when moved from one system or media to another system or …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Lauren Work, a National Digital Stewardship Resident at PBS. After our inaugural experience presenting just a few weeks ago at ALA Midwinter, the residents of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program headed to WebWise 2014 in Baltimore, MD on February 10th to present our project progress as well …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
One of the tricks to working in an interdisciplinary field like digital preservation is that all too often we can be using the same terms but not actually talking about the same things. In my opinion, the most fraught term in digital preservation discussions is “archive.” At this point, it has come to mean a …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
Bill LeFurgy makes gentle stretching motions with his hands as he demonstrates how he exercises his cat’s legs every night. Clarence, his cat, just had hip surgery and LeFurgy has to serve as his physical therapist for the next two months. This routine, this new responsibility, comes at a time when he is about to …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Leslie Johnston
I was asked to present a talk today for an internal group at the Library of Congress based on my recent experiences participating in the Top Tech Trends panel at the 2014 American Library Association Midwinter meeting. It was suggested that I present a “Leslie-fied” version of the always-inspiring landscape talks that my colleague Cliff …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Holly Krueger, head of the Paper Conservation Section of the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate.) Last December, the Library of Congress unveiled a remarkable drawing by the “outsider artist,” Martin Ramirez. The drawing depicts a Madonna figure standing on a blue globe surrounded by canyons filled with anthropomorphic …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Bill LeFurgy
The following is a guest post by Christie Moffatt, Manager, Digital Manuscripts Program, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine Developing case studies around digital content subject areas has been a major focus of the NDSA Content Working Group, and the activity has enabled members to share the concerns and challenges specific to their communities. …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
While many kinds of analog media age with a kind of dignity, taking on a patina of age and the term “vintage,” the same is generally not true of digital media. Of the range of digital media out there, the humble rewritable CD is likely one of the least loved and most rapidly aging and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Engle
The following is a guest post by Nicole Scalessa, IT manager at The Library Company of Philadelphia, an NDSA member. Digital stewardship is a prime topic for small institutions trying to keep pace with the increasing demands for digital content. The Library Company of Philadelphia, a special collections library founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731, …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Maureen McCormick Harlow, a National Digital Stewardship Resident at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. She is working on a project to build a thematic web collection. Greetings from the National Library of Medicine! It’s hard to believe it, but I’m heading into the fourth quarter …
Posted in: The Signal