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By: Susan Manus
A couple of weeks ago I attended a talk by Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution. The talk, entitled “Let Us Go Boldly Into the Present” (similar to his presentation at our Partners Meeting this past summer), touched on a lot that we think about, deal with or just …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Susan Manus
Anyone who is following our program, and our blog, is by now familiar with the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, our partnership initiative that was launched a little over a year ago. The members of the NDSA all share a common purpose, contributing to a collaborative effort to preserve access to our national digital heritage. Since …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Laura Graham, a Digital Media Project Coordinator at the Library of Congress. Bit preservation activities for the Web Archiving team include acquiring content, copying it to multiple storage systems, verifying it, and maintaining information current about the content. But even these minimal steps, which do not include managing …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Martha Anderson
This is part of a series that explores the topic of digital preservation in an alphabetical way. Each post will use a word or phrase as a device to explore a concept and point to a useful resource for understanding specific aspects of the practice of digital preservation. Almost every week, I encounter some comments …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
In part 1 of this article, I wrote that relational databases are the engines that drive digital genealogy. Databases make it possible to quickly search through enormous quantities of records, find the person you’re looking for and discover related people and events. And when institutions collaborate and share databases, statistical information becomes enriched. For example, …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Butch Lazorchak
We are excited to share this guest post from MacKenzie Smith, Research Director at the MIT Libraries. At the joint NDIIPP/NDSA meeting this summer MacKenzie gave a talk titled “Exhibit3@MIT: Lessons learned from 10 years of the Simile Project for building library open source software” in our session on open source tools and communities. The …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Jennifer Gavin
Well, we promised you two days’ worth of writers for the 2011 Library of Congress National Book Festival – and here they come: an unprecedented 112 authors, poets and illustrators will speak and meet with their readers at the free public event on Saturday, Sept. 24 and Sunday, Sept. 25 on the National Mall! What’s …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Butch Lazorchak
What’s on the minds of archivists these days? Well, lots of things, judging from the program from the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, held at the end of August in Chicago. The theme of this year’s conference was “Archives 360°,” and the 75th anniversary providing a convenient milestone for the profession …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Leslie Johnston
On a recent trip I visited a funky vintage store to see if anything caught my eye. While I was easily able to keep myself from buying any jewelry or taxidermy, I came across a number of displays of family photographs available for sale. Not only were there bowls of loose photos, there was a …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Mike Ashenfelder
The popularity of genealogy websites and TV shows is rapidly growing, mainly because the Internet has made it so convenient to access family history information. Almost everything can be done through the computer now. Before the digital age, genealogical research was not only laborious and time consuming, it also resulted in boxes of documents: photos, …
Posted in: The Signal