Top of page
By: Abbey Potter
Late in April, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the International Internet Preservation Consortium gathered for its annual General Assembly. This year is the 10th anniversary of the organization, and we marked the milestone by reflecting on our past accomplishments and thinking about how the members could work together to make positive and lasting impacts on the field of …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Bill LeFurgy
A smart-alecky way to answer the question in the title above would be: “why everything, of course.” But we don’t traffic in snark here, at least not intentionally. User expectations influence so much of what stewardship organizations do. We collect and preserve all content primarily to support use, but the issue is especially important in …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
While Noah Lenstra was working on a website about African-American history in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, many of the people he met at local public libraries, churches and businesses told him they had personal and family memorabilia they wanted to digitize, or they had digital stuff that they didn’t know what to do with. Lenstra, a PhD student …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Leslie Johnston
Yesterday, May 9, 2013, the U.S. government issued an executive order and an open data policy mandating that federal agencies collect and publish new datasets in open, machine-readable, and, whenever possible, non-proprietary formats. The new policy gives agencies six months to create an inventory of all the government-produced datasets they collect and maintain; a list …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Tess Webre, former intern with NDIIPP at the Library of Congress Preservation Week 2013 might be over, but digital preservation must go on every week of the year. In truth, preservation is an ongoing, long lasting process that requires active management. Don’t despair, though. I have some helpful suggestions to …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jennifer Gavin
It’s the year 1933. There’s a 13-year-old kid in the front row at the movie palace. He’s watching “King Kong,” completely transfixed. And there, in the flickering light of the screen, in the roar of the soundtrack, a famous career is born – as a youngster named Ray, already obsessed with dinosaurs, tells himself “Wow. …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Erin Allen
The Library of Congress blogosphere published lots of great content in April. Following is just a highlight. In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog An “Appalachian Spring” Collaboration Students from the Baltimore School for the Arts talk about working with the Music Division collections. Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business The Great Sheet Cake Mystery Jennifer …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Trevor Owens
In this installment of the NDSA innovation working group’s ongoing series of innovation interviews I talk with Alison Langmead and Brian Beaton about the approach they are taking to teaching Digital Preservation at the University of Pittsburgh. Alison holds a joint appointment in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture and the School …
Posted in: The Signal
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. What tends to be 3.5 inches tall and 10 inches long? Postcards created in a panoramic view format. More than 400 oversize postcards are “new for you” in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. The Library received most of the postcards …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Mike Ashenfelder
We produce occasional short videos related to digital preservation. These videos address such topics as personal digital archiving, adding descriptions to digital photographs and the K-12 Web Archiving program, to name a few. Our newest video profiles one of the Library of Congress’s most magnificent treasures: the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, located in …
Posted in: The Signal