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Preservation Week 2013: Saving Our Cultural Hertiage and Personal Family Collections

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Preservation Week 2013 is just over a month away, and we’ve been busy planning Library of Congress events.

Preservation Week 2013 logo

Every year, we like to mix things up and hold various types of events for our local Washington, DC communities.  This year, we’re pleased to co-host the Rosenzweig Forum on Technology and the Humanities on the evening of Monday, April 22, at the Library. The Rosenzweig Forum for the Digital Humanities is a collaboration of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland.

We’re lining up presenters to discuss how their organizations are acquiring, managing, preserving and providing access to born-digital collections. Regardless of size, institutions are receiving born-digital collections, with challenges of accessioning personal digital information on digital media in various formats and and having preservation tools and resources to manage these collections long-term. They acquire these collections with the responsibility of passing them to future generations and we’re excited to help share how our local institutions are caring for their shared collections.
Veterans History Project logoCollaboration is a huge part of what we do in NDIIPP and that extends to our colleagues here in the Library.  We’re working with the Preservation Directorate and the Veterans History Project on public programming, with a special focus this year on saving and preserving memories of the military and their families.

The Library’s Veterans History Project collects and preserves the first-hand interviews and memoirs of America’s wartime veterans.  These mementos – digital and analog correspondence, photos, home movies, scrapbooks and albums, and objects such as medals and uniforms – represent a significant cultural record of personal accounts of American war veterans. The Project designed a special web presentation for Preservation Week highlighting the stories of seven veterans.  This collection represents the wide variety of concerns that must be addressed when preserving these personal accounts.

We’re also developing other programs that will be held throughout the week:

Preservation Directorate photograph conservator speaking at our 2010 Personal Digital Archiving Day. Credit: Abby Brack
Preservation Directorate photograph conservator speaking at our 2010 Personal Digital Archiving Day. Credit: Abby Brack

“Preserving Your Memories: Print and Digital Photographs.”  During this program, Preservation Directorate conservators will highlight basic preservation measures individuals at home can do to care for their print photographs.   NDIIPP staff will talk about our personal digital archiving guidance for saving digital photos. Staff from the Library’s Veterans History Project will share information on how to participate in the Project. And there will be a special discussion of the research and treatment of a WWI photograph album.

“Preserving Your Memories: Traditional and Digital Albums and Scrapbooks.”  Similar to the above program, this program will feature presentations by Preservation Directorate conservators on basic preservation measures to care for albums and scrapbooks, while we’ll cover preservation considerations for digital scrapbooks and albums. Veterans History Project staff will again talk about their project.

We’re also thrilled to present for the third year a webinar on Preserving Your Personal Digital Photographs.  Hosted by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, we’ll share information with librarians, information professionals and other individuals to help them save digital photographs.  The webinar is free, but registration is required.

Stay tuned for dates, locations and times of all the Library’s Preservation Week events.

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