Fixity, the property of a digital file or object being fixed or unchanged, is a cornerstone of digital preservation. Fixity information, from simple file counts or file size values to more precise checksums and cryptographic hashes, is data used to verify whether an object has been altered or degraded. Many in the preservation community know …
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. Here on The Signal, members of the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation team have been providing some …
This blog post is co-authored by Carl Fleischhauer, Project Manager, Digital Initiatives, Library of Congress. People who manage audio and video files over time, do create fixity data, aka hash values or checksums, to help monitor the condition of those files in storage and when moved from one system or media to another system or …
How do I know if a digital file/object has been corrupted, changed or altered? Further how can I prove that I know what I have? How can I be confident that the content I am providing is in good condition, complete, or reasonably complete? How do I verify that a file/object has not changed over …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a Digital Initiatives Project Manager in the Office of Strategic Initiatives. FADGI format comparison projects. The Audio-Visual Working Group within the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative recently posted a comparison of a few selected digital file formats for consideration when reformatting videotapes. We sometimes call these …
As artists have embraced a range of new media and forms in the last century as the work of collecting, conserving and exhibiting these works has become increasingly complex and challenging. In this space, Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito have been working to develop and understand approaches to ensure long-term access to digital works. In …
In September the Library held its annual Designing Storage Architectures for Digital Collections meeting. The meeting brings together technical experts from the computer storage industry with decision-makers from a wide range of organizations with digital preservation requirements to explore the issues and opportunities around the storage of digital information for the long-term. I always learn …
The National Digital Stewardship Alliance is pleased to announce the release today of the “2015 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship.” The Agenda provides funders, decision‐makers and practitioners with insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity and key areas for research and development to support the work needed to ensure that today’s valuable …
The following post was authored by Erin Engle, Michelle Gallinger, Butch Lazorchak, Jane Mandelbaum and Trevor Owens from the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress held the 10th annual Designing Storage Architectures for Digital Collections meeting September 22-23, 2014. This meeting is an annual opportunity for invited technical industry experts, IT professionals, digital collections …
