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By: Erin Allen
It is rather hard to believe that at one time some of the decorative murals that adorn every nook and cranny of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building weren’t even known to be there. In the decades after it opened in 1897, the building became increasingly overcrowded with growing staff and collections. By the …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Mike Ashenfelder
On a crisp, clear January day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Lucinda Marker and her husband, John Tull, stepped inside an Airstream trailer that StoryCorps converted into a mobile recording studio. Marker and Tull were there to interview each other for an audio memento, to reminisce and talk about significant moments in their shared lives, especially …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
(The following is a story written by Library of Congress archivist Cheryl Fox for the July-August 2013 edition of the Library of Congress Magazine. You can download the issue in its entirety here.) As the American people struggled to come to grips with the death of president John F. Kennedy, the nation’s Library provided reference, …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Jennifer Gavin
This is a guest post by Cheryl Fox of the Library’s Manuscript Division The First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas (July 21, 1861) set many precedents in American history—key troops were transported by train, battle reconnaissance was attempted via observation balloon, battle scenes were sketched and the battle’s aftermath, photographed to be published in newspapers. And …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Leslie Johnston
I have had two conversation recently — one an intern and one with a friend outside our community — about my career path, and career paths in general around digital preservation. Paraphrasing, well, everyone (who may not know they are quoting the game Colossal Cave Adventure from 1976), it was a maze of twisty little …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jeff Bridgers
Every summer we can rent a cottage, in the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear –“When I’m Sixty-Four,” John Lennon & Paul McCartney Since we’re in the midst of Washington, D.C.’s first genuine heat wave this summer, my mind turns to imagining cooler climes. And, naturally, these daydreams often involve cooling waters. Real travel is not in …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Butch Lazorchak
In early July I wrote about the “what” of email archiving. That is, “what” are we trying to preserve when we say we’re “preserving email.” It was admittedly a cursory look at the issue, but hopefully it’s a start for more thorough discussions down the road. This time I’ll dig in a little deeper and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jennifer Gavin
This year’s casting call for the Library of Congress National Book Festival is complete, and our lineup for the free event Sept. 21 and 22 will include writers Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates and Khaled Hosseini, graphic novelists Lynda Barry, Fred Chao, Jonathan Hennessey, Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, and authors Linda Ronstadt, Christopher Buckley, …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Mike Ashenfelder
Preserving digital stuff for the future is a heavy responsibility. With digital photos, for instance, would it be possible someday to generate perfectly sharp high-density, high-resolution photos from blurry or low-resolution digital originals? Probably not but who knows? The technological future is unpredictable. The possibility invites the question: shouldn’t we save our digital photos at …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Megan Phillips, NARA’s Electronic Records Lifecycle Coordinator and an elected member of the NDSA coordinating committee and Andrea Goethals, Harvard Library’s Manager of Digital Preservation and Repository Services and co-chair of the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group. As part of the effort to publicize the NDSA Levels of …
Posted in: The Signal