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Posted by: Leslie Johnston
On October 20 I had the extreme pleasure of being one of the plenary speakers at the 2011 Best Practices Exchange. I rarely have the opportunity to get an hour all to myself to speak about pretty much whatever I want to talk about. One one hand, I wanted the opportunity to extend the topics …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration, Tools and Infrastructure, Viewshare
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
At our recent Preservation Storage Meeting, the word “data” was frequently mentioned. This was of some note to me, as cultural heritage organizations have, until recently, spoken of “collections” and “content” or even “files,” but not data. This is of course not the case at universities, where social science and observational datasets are very much …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
One of our annual highlights is The Storage Meeting, which brings together digital preservation practitioners and data storage vendors to have an open discussion. We held this year’s meeting, Designing Storage Architectures for Preservation Collections, during September 26-27, in Washington DC. Over 100 archivists and librarians, computer scientists, IT professionals and storage vendors participated. This …
Posted in: Outreach and Events, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted 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: Digital Content, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
When I meet new people and tell them that I work at the Library of Congress, the first question is usually “What do you do there?” When I explain that part of my job is to oversee a group that develops software, the reaction is often one of surprise: “What? Libraries develop software?” Yes. Yes …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
I was recently asked a question that I had never considered before: If I wanted to create a digital time capsule, how would I ensure that it is usable in twenty or fifty or more years? The International Time Capsule Society provides tips on creating a physical capsule. But what about the digital? At its …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
One of the meetings I look the most forward to every year is the Open Repositories conference, which was recently held in Austin, Texas on June 6-11, 2011. One of the reasons that I enjoy this meeting so much is that is one of the most international meetings that I have the opportunity to participate …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
Libraries, archives, and museums are acquiring increasing numbers of born-digital collections. I’ve been interested to see the increased use of digital forensics tools in the appraisal and processing and accessing of such collections. But there are challenges. Some of the software tools come from the realm of legal forensics, where chain of custody and recovery …
Posted in: Digital Content