The following is a guest post by Erin Engle, Digital Archivist, NDIIPP. A man wanted to migrate his dissertation from punch cards. A young girl held a floppy disk for the first time and expressed wonder that it had anything to do with digital information. A woman–the family archivist–wanted to pass her digital collection to …
The following is a guest post by Erin Engle, Digital Archivist, NDIIPP. Like many here at the Library, we’re busy preparing for the 2011 National Book Festival on the mall in Washington, DC. The festival will take place Saturday, Sept. 24 and Sunday, Sept. 25. The festival now runs over two days and includes more …
In part 1 of this article, I wrote that relational databases are the engines that drive digital genealogy. Databases make it possible to quickly search through enormous quantities of records, find the person you’re looking for and discover related people and events. And when institutions collaborate and share databases, statistical information becomes enriched. For example, …
On a recent trip I visited a funky vintage store to see if anything caught my eye. While I was easily able to keep myself from buying any jewelry or taxidermy, I came across a number of displays of family photographs available for sale. Not only were there bowls of loose photos, there was a …
The popularity of genealogy websites and TV shows is rapidly growing, mainly because the Internet has made it so convenient to access family history information. Almost everything can be done through the computer now. Before the digital age, genealogical research was not only laborious and time consuming, it also resulted in boxes of documents: photos, …
When was the last time you wrote a letter, on paper? Other than my note-to-self stickies (my desk usually has a bunch), or greeting cards, I personally have not written much of substance, just on paper, in a long time. These days, of course, we are engulfed in the digital versions of note writing – …
The following is a guest post by Gloria Gonzalez, a 2011 Junior Fellow working with NDIIPP. When watching a video online, do you ever wonder how much time it took to create? Or what content was left out? During my time as an intern, I worked on a video about descriptive metadata for personal photographs. …
“Bob, can you give a presentation to thirty 8th graders on digital preservation.” “Sure. When’s the presentation?” “At 3:00 o’clock today.” “[YIKES!]” If your organization is like most, this scenario happens more regularly than you’d like. Fear not! The National Digital Stewardship Alliance Outreach Working Group set out to provide some solutions during its workshop …
The following is a guest post by Victoria Priester, a 2011 Junior Fellow working with NDIIPP. During my first week as a Library of Congress Junior Fellow I was given the North Carolina Public Outreach and Education Project. The project’s objective was to send resources and information about personal digital preservation to public libraries, community …