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Category: NDSA

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We Want You Just the Way You Are: The What, Why and When of Fixity

Posted by: Trevor Owens

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 …

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We’re All Digital Archivists Now: An Interview with Sibyl Schaefer

Posted by: Trevor Owens

Digital was everywhere at this year’s Society of American Archivists annual meeting. What is particularly exciting is that many of these sessions were practical and pragmatic. That is, many sessions focused on exactly how archivists are meeting the challenge of born-digital records. In one such session, Sibyl Schaefer, Head of Digital Programs at the Rockefeller …

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Register for CURATEcamp: Digital Culture, July 24th

Posted by: Trevor Owens

Alongside this year’s Digital Preservation 2014 meeting, I am excited to announce that we will also be playing host to a CURATEcamp unconference focused on exploring the collecting, preserving and providing access to records of digital culture. For those unfamiliar with unconferences, the key idea is that the participants define the agenda and that there …

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Software, Digital Art, Data Curation & Archives! The 2014 NDSA Innovation Award Winners

Posted by: Trevor Owens

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group is excited to announce the winners of the 2014 NDSA Innovation Awards. Each year the Innovation Working Group solicits nominations for  projects, individuals, and organizations doing innovative and substantive work in digital preservation. This is the third year we have handed out these awards and previous blog …

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Protect Your Data: Information Security and the Boundaries of your Storage System

Posted by: Trevor Owens

The following is a guest post from Jane Mandelbaum, co-chair of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working group and IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. The NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation are useful in providing a high-level, at-a-glance overview of tiered guidance for planning for digital preservation. One of the most common requests received …

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Exploring Computational Categorization of Records: A Conversation with Meg Phillips from NARA

Posted by: Trevor Owens

Continuing the insights interview series, I’m excited to share this conversation with Meg Phillips, External Affairs Liaison at the National Archives and Records Administration. A few years back we “un-chaired” CURATEcamp Processing: Processing Data/Processing Collections together. Meg wrote a guest post reflecting on that event for the Signal titled More Product, Less Process for Born-Digital …

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Protect Your Data: File Fixity and Data Integrity

Posted by: Trevor Owens

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 …

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Nominations Now Open for the 2014 NDSA Innovation Awards

Posted by: Trevor Owens

 The National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group is proud to open the nominations for the 2014 NDSA Innovation Awards. As a diverse membership group with a shared commitment to digital preservation, the NDSA understands the importance of innovation and risk-taking in developing and supporting a broad range of successful digital preservation activities. These awards …

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Check Yourself: How and When to Check Fixity

Posted by: Trevor Owens

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 …