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Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
We digital archivists warn about the risk of losing data with the assumption that the threat of loss is enough to stir people to action. But while most everyone has their own experience with data loss, people have a way of tucking past pain away rather than remaining hyper-vigilant about something similar happening again. Or …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
Digitization–making a digital copy of a non-digital object–is a bedeviling topic for digital preservationists. Establishing a clear line of demarcation between the process of creating the digital copy and the process of keeping the copy over time is the central issue. I’ve always thought this was semantics. Well-meaning, but ill-informed, people said “digital preservation” when …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Emily Reynolds, a former Library of Congress Junior Fellow and recent Alternative Spring Break intern. Last week, as part of the University of Michigan School of Information’s Alternative Spring Break program, I worked on a project to develop web archiving use cases for the International Internet Preservation Consortium. The …
Posted in: Digital Content, Internships and Fellowships, Web Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
Getting emotional about historical collections is unusual for most people. Ask the average person to free associate words for “archives” and your will hear “dusty, “old,” “dark” and so on. Ask about digital archives and you will likely just get a blank stare. This is an occupational hazard of digital archivists, that awkward first attempt to …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
You should have an archive for your personal digital materials. We all should. Archives preserve memories of “me” as well as “us.” Our personal archives also offer exciting new ways to remember and reconstruct our lives. Attendees of the Personal Digital Archiving 2013 conference considered these ideas over two days of presentations and discussion last …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Jose “Ricky” Padilla, a HACU intern working with NDIIPP. “There are some deep challenges ahead for cultural heritage and archives, but the forensic perspective is undoubtedly among the most promising sources of insights and solutions. Equally, digital forensics can benefit from the advances being made in the curation and …
Posted in: Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The following is a guest post by Jefferson Bailey, Strategic Initiatives Manager at Metropolitan New York Library Council, National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group co-chair and a former Fellow in the Library of Congress’s Office of Strategic Initiatives. An affordance is a characteristic of an object or thing that supports a specific activity. For …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
I had the opportunity today to talk at the Big Data and Big Challenges for Law and Legal Information symposium at the Georgetown University Law Center. The event marked the 125th anniversary of the University Law Library. My panel was on Big Data Applications in Scholarship and Policy, and I was pleased to present with …
Posted in: Digital Content, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Chris Adams, in the Repository Development Center, technical lead for the World Digital Library at the the Library of Congress. Like many people who work with digital imagery, I’ve been looking forward to the JPEG-2000 image format for a long time due to solid technical advantages: superior compression performance …
Posted in: Tools and Infrastructure