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Archive: 2012 (17 Posts)

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Every Format on the Face of the Planet

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

Some weeks ago I gave a presentation that I jokingly titled “The Challenges of Preserving Every Digital Format on the Face of the Planet.” Except it’s not really a joke. We often have little or no control over what comes into the Library of Congress Digital Collections, and we manage and preserve a wide variety …

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Defining the “Big” in Big Data

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

Of late it seems that almost every project I have been called to work on involves some aspect of “Big Data.”  I have been challenged in the past that libraries actually have big data, because we don’t as a general rule collect social science or scientific datasets.  But I feel strongly in asserting that our …

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How many Libraries of Congress does it take?

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

In July 2011, Nicholas Taylor posted an entry to this blog about the amount of data transferred to the Library of Congress and the likely sources of some of the public perceptions of the size of the Library’s digital collections.  And Matt Raymond of the Library posted an excellent overview of the size of the …

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Jason Scott, Rogue Archivist

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

I first encountered Jason Scott in mid- to late-2010 through a colleague who informed that me that if I did not know who he was, that I had better learn.  Since then I have become a big fan of his passion for digital archiving and his drive to save collections and content that few organizations …

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PASIG: From Special Interest Group to a Life of its Own

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

Once upon a time, a big technology company wanted to get together a like-minded segment of its customers, those who worked at educational and memory institutions that were concerned about long-term preservation and best practices in digital archiving. Thus was born PASIG: the Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group.  Since 2007 there have been dozens …

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There are More Tools for Digital Curation Than You Might Think

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

On January 6, 2012, I had the opportunity to attend CurateGear, an interactive, day-long event focused on digital curation tools and methods held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This meeting did many things right. It introduced attendees to the wide spectrum of digital curation activities, from appraisal to ingest to auditing …

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The World Digital Library: A Truly International Effort

Posted by: Leslie Johnston

In November of 2011 I had the pleasure of attending the annual World Digital Library partner’s meeting in Munich, Germany, hosted by the Bavarian State Library. This year’s meeting was a highly productive series of working sessions, highlighting the exceptional progress of the initiative and the current and future efforts of the partner institutions in …