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Posted by: Leslie Johnston
When I meet new people and tell them that I work at the Library of Congress, the first question is usually “What do you do there?” When I explain that part of my job is to oversee a group that develops software, the reaction is often one of surprise: “What? Libraries develop software?” Yes. Yes …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Abbie Grotke, Web Archiving Team Lead at the Library of Congress. As I’ve written about before, LC takes a selective approach when archiving the web. Selection of sites is not something we automate; Recommending Officers (or, “ROs” in LC lingo), do this work. Recommending materials for addition to …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
Most people think of books when they think of the Library of Congress, but in fact, the Library is one of the largest collectors of maps in the world. It’s a challenge for any organization, even the Library of Congress, to keep up with the quantity of maps now being created digitally, but there is …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
When Rebecca Guenther retires from the Library of Congress in August 2011, 35 years of institutional knowledge about bibliographic information will go with her. The Library of Congress loses – among other things – the world’s leading authority on PREMIS metadata for digital preservation. Guenther has nurtured conversations among international library stakeholders, conversations that led …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Partners and Collaboration, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Barrett Jones, Program Specialist for the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education initiative at the Library. Right now as I type this post, there is a two-hour Introduction to Digital Preservation online course available from the State Library of North Carolina Digital Information Management Program. On July 25th there’s …
Posted in: Digital Content, Education and Training, Inside the Library, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
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 …
Posted in: Education and Training, Inside the Library, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
The following is a guest post by Jimi Jones, Audio-Visual Specialist, NDIIPP. A correction was made to this post on July 7, 2011. “What’s the best digital video file format for preservation?” Finding appropriate digital preservation file formats for audiovisual materials is not an easy task. While much of the recorded sound preservation realm has …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
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 …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Partners and Collaboration, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
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 …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Partners and Collaboration, Tools and Infrastructure