This is a map. Of course, it’s not just any map. It’s the Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes from 1507, otherwise known as the Waldseemüller map after its creator, Martin Waldseemüller. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as …
The following is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, Web Archiving Team Lead at the Library of Congress. Eleven years ago, the Library of Congress established a pilot web archiving project to study methods to evaluate, select, collect, catalog, provide access to and preserve at-risk born digital content for future generations. We could write a …
To have a complete picture of digital preservation, it helps to look at other activities that have a very real impact – digital conversion being a good example. We recently welcomed a new colleague who is already making a difference with this effort, Steven Puglia, who recently joined the Library of Congress as Digital Conversion …
Enhanced access to historical resources drives the incentives to preserve. At least that’s the thinking behind the Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information Project. The project, headed by the Minnesota Historical Society with state government partners in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee and Vermont, …
When Andrea Goethals wants to escape the demands of her software engineering work at Harvard University library, she heads to the mountains of Maine. But not for pampered leisure. She and her husband volunteer with the Appalachian Mountain Club, maintaining a trail they’ve both adopted. They purge debris, drain water and remove massive obstacles. On …
The following is a guest post by Gloria Gonzalez, a 2011 Junior Fellow working with NDIIPP. Imagine an internet where every single webpage interconnects to other related information. While browsing a site about the history of the United States, for example, you could see digital versions of the documents that established it–with the click of …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, Project Coordinator, Office of Strategic Initiatives. Like many others, I have been fascinated to watch the production of newspapers–as depicted in the movies like The Front Page or All the President’s Men. To be sure, these tales were enlivened by plot elements like exposing Watergate and …
One of the meetings I look the most forward to every year is the Open Repositories conference, which was recently held in Austin, Texas on June 6-11, 2011. One of the reasons that I enjoy this meeting so much is that is one of the most international meetings that I have the opportunity to participate …
The diaries of George Washington, the first map that used the name “America,” jazz recordings from the 1920s, pictures from presidential inaugurations—the Library of Congress has a very diverse collection of documents, recordings, pictures and maps that help us understand the story of our nation. Most discussions of saving cultural heritage information involve looking into …
