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By: Trevor Owens
For a while now, Stanford University’s special collections have had the distinct honor of holding “one of the largest historical collections of interactive software in the world.” The Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at Stanford University consists of several thousands of pieces of computer hardware and software. At a recent advisory …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
As you play a digital music file on an audio-enabled device such as a computer or smart phone, the audio player displays information about the song. Sometimes that happens because the player has an associated database, sometime that happens because the information is embedded in the file. This blog is about embedding, how song information …
Posted in: The Signal
This item from the Popular Graphic Arts collection recently caught the eye of Phil Michel, Digital Conversion Coordinator in the Prints & Photographs Division. Phil commented, “Early engineering marvels often catch my eye. Some of the ships, buildings, bridges, tunnels, etc., that were built in the industrial age were just phenomenal in their scale. I …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Bill LeFurgy
I had the opportunity today to talk at the Big Data and Big Challenges for Law and Legal Information symposium at the Georgetown University Law Center. The event marked the 125th anniversary of the University Law Library. My panel was on Big Data Applications in Scholarship and Policy, and I was pleased to present with …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, Library of Congress Web Archiving Team Lead While organizations have been archiving the web since the mid-1990s, it’s only in the last few years that there’s been a surge in web archivists speaking out about issues they encounter, uses of archives, and innovations in tools and …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
(The following is an article from the January-February 2013 issue of the Library’s magazine, LCM, highlighting “first drafts” of important documents in American history.) Robert Frost (1874 –1963) was the first poet commissioned to write a poem for a presidential inauguration. His poem, titled “Dedication,” was intended to be read at the inauguration of John …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Susan Manus
The following is a guest post by Tess Webre, an intern with NDIIPP at the Library of Congress. My interest in digital preservation began many years before I started my master’s degree. I was working on a long and arduous project and located a very helpful looking resource created in the 1980s at a local …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
Did you know that John Wilkes Booth was involved in an incident at Lincoln’s second inauguration, in March of 1865? It was seen as a mere scuffle at the time, but significant later on, as it happened about six weeks before Booth assassinated President Lincoln on that fateful day in April, 1865. The whole fascinating …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. These collections, housed in the Manuscript Division—and the Library’s holdings in other formats such as rare books, photographs, films, sound recordings, sheet music and maps—inform us about the time and tenor of each of their administrations. Unique to …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Mike Ashenfelder
The Library of Congress, the ALA’s Association for Library Collections and Technical Services and the Public Library Association have joined forces to spread information about personal digital archiving, using public libraries as information resources for local communities. Barbara A. Macikas, executive director of the PLA (a division of the American Library Association), said that the shared mission of …
Posted in: The Signal