Top Blog Posts of the Month

During the past almost-year of our existence, The Signal has covered a lot of territory, topic-wise.  But in the midst of all the activity required to keep this very active blog going, it’s easy for us to get lost in the day-to-day.  So, I think it’s a good idea once in awhile to pause and observe – that is, to take stock of where we are and what our readers are most interested in.

In looking through our statistics of blog “hits” (or page views) for the month of March, it looks like the following blog posts have the distinction of being the “top five” for the past month.  (Maybe we’ll highlight the “top posts of the year” once we reach that milestone!)  If you are curious, as we are, about what topics people are most interested in, here they are below, listed in reverse order:

No. 5:  The Results of One Scholar’s Survey: What Are Your Plans for Your Personal Digital Archives?

Guest blogger Sarah Kim, from the University of Texas at Austin, offers detailed descriptions of her interviews with 20 people about their thoughts and plans for preserving their personal digital documents.

No. 4:  File Fixity and Digital Preservation Storage, More Results from the NDSA Storage Survey

Guest blogger, Jefferson Bailey, a Fellow here at the Library of Congress, explains the concept of “fixity” checking for digital objects, and the approaches taken by NDSA member organizations.

No. 3:  Visualizing Digital Preservation Workflows

Wherein our own Bill Lefurgy talks about the basic steps in a digital preservation workflow, and provides nifty graphics and diagrams to illustrate the principles and various options.

No. 2:  What Are the Best Images for Promoting Digital Preservation?

Here, Bill Lefurgy offers up some choice images for illustrating the concept of digital “destruction”, and how these images help make the case for digital preservation.

And, at No. 1, the winner is:  #sxswLAM: Libraries, Archives and Museums in an Interactive World

Butch Lazorchak talks about the library profession from the context of the huge annual technology gathering in Texas, “South By Southwest Interactive”.   Maybe it’s this first sentence that hooked everyone in:

“In the midst of the South By Southwest Interactive Conference, I daydream about a time (ideally in the not-so-distant future) when librarians, archivists and museum professionals (LAMs) rule the world.”

These posts reflect what our readers were most interested in over the past month.  Going forward, we’d love to have some feedback about what other topics might be of interest.  So – what else would you like to see here?   Are there any other topics relating to digital preservation and access that we haven’t covered yet?  Or, maybe topics that you just want to hear more about?  We want to know your thoughts, so feel free to share your ideas with us in our comments section below.