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Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
Curiously, most of us in the digital memory business are hesitant to visually document our own work. Possibly this has to do with the perceived nature of the enterprise, which involves tasks that may seem routine. But pictures tell an important story, and I set about finding a few that depicted some of the digital preservation …
Posted in: Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The humble bloggers who toil on behalf of The Signal strive to tell stimulating stories about digital stewardship. This is unusual labor. It blends passion for a rapidly evolving subject with exacting choices about what to focus on. Collecting, preserving and making available digital resources is driving enormous change, and the pace is so fast …
Posted in: Inside the Library, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The first images I recall of the Kennedy Assassination are grainy black and white television broadcasts. I was in the fourth grade 50 years ago today, and after an anguished announcement on the public address system, we were sent home. The TV was on in the living room with solemn reports. What followed over the …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
What if the Kennedy assassination had happened during the era of smartphones and laptops? And, assuming the perpetrator left a digital trail, would that evidence uncover any associated conspiracy? As we approach the 50th anniversary of that awful day in Dallas, recent public opinion polls indicate that over 60 percent of Americans believe more than …
Posted in: Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The following is a guest post by Nicholas Taylor, Web Archiving Service Manager for Stanford University Libraries. I’m inclined to blame the semantic flexibility of the word “archive” for the fact that someone with no previous exposure to web archives might variously suppose that they are: the result of saving web pages from the browser, …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
Given the popularity of 71 Digital Portals to State History from last month–we got many comments with great additions to that list–I thought it would be useful to extend the conversation to the local level. Unlike for the earlier post, we did not have the services of an intern to do the research, so the starting …
Posted in: Digital Content, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
A recent NDIIPP intern, Ingrid Jernudd, did some research into current web resources that provide digital access to a broad array of primary source materials at the state level. She prepared a list of sites that billed themselves as general-interest portals to historical resources. Although the list is likely incomplete, I was surprised she found …
Posted in: Digital Content, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
What’s so special about libraries? This is a rhetorical question, as I think libraries are amazing places. But many are dead serious in posing the query these days. To this point the answer has been new services built on top of the tremendous reservoir of goodwill that libraries have accrued over the decades. But technology …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, Web Archiving Team Lead. We recently moved to a new house, and my husband, a professional musician, has been working on setting up a music and recording studio upstairs now that we have the room. Alongside the clarinets, saxophones and keyboard sit a desktop computer (with better …
Posted in: Personal Archiving