The following is a guest post by Nicholas Taylor, Information Technology Specialist for the Repository Development Group. Though presented as a unified experience, a website depends on many interrelated parts: document markup and dynamic code, assorted binary file types, software interpreters and platforms. The challenge of web archive preservation planning is to save this experience, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
A couple of years ago I picked up a reissue of a 1970 record by a band called Stark Reality. Their lone record is a funky jazz re-working of Hoagy Carmichael compositions for a children’s public television program: highly idiosyncratic but pleasingly unusual. Turns out that in addition to their album they composed the theme …
