Skimpy. Sparse. Sporadic. I used these words a few years ago to generalize the state of tools, services and other technology for digital stewardship. Until recently, an institution that wanted to actively manage its digital content over the long term had one basic option: build an infrastructure from scratch. Much has changed over the last …
This is a guest post from Mike Burke from the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. The U.S. Copyright Office has a comprehensive set of records about books, periodicals, music, motion pictures and other works that were registered with the Office between 1870 and 1977. The records include transfers and assignments of rights …
The following is a guest post by David Brunton, a Supervisory Information Technology Specialist in the Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives. I have heard the National Digital Newspaper Program jokingly described as “putting breaking new online, within 200 years.” In some ways, it’s a fitting tag line: the most current newspaper pages released …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a Digital Initiatives Project Manager in NDIIPP. This is the final blog on the topic of informational and artifactual values in the digitization of books (and other documents) and photographic negatives and transparencies. Here are links to the book-related blogs: Part 1 and Part 2. Part …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a Digital Initiatives Project Manager in NDIIPP. What does it mean to digitize a photographic negative? My previous pair of blogs discussed digitizing books (and other textual materials), exploring the ways that the process captures informational and artifactual aspects of the original item. The short version …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a Digital Initiatives Project Manager in NDIIPP. Yesterday, I blogged about the digital reformatting of historical books and other documents. I reported that virtually all digitization projects in memory institutions present the information from the pages in the form of a searchable text. I also noted …
The following is a guest post by Carl Fleischhauer, a Digital Initiatives Project Manager in NDIIPP. How do you reproduce a book in digital form? This may seem like a simple question until you pick up a book and page through it. You may be struck by “how” in the methodological sense, knowing you need …
In truth, every day is digital archives day here at the Library. But, in honor of the official Digital Archives Day, I thought it would be useful to mention some of the pertinent resources the Library has or helps support. There are two basic categories: 1) digital content collections, and 2) information about digital projects …
The following is a guest post by Kristin Snawder, a 2011 Junior Fellow working with NDIIPP. When I came to the Library I never imagined that my first project would be to face off with the hard issues underlining digital preservation policy development. Policy development was new to me, and the task seemed daunting. But …