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Posted by: Leslie Johnston
I was recently asked a question that I had never considered before: If I wanted to create a digital time capsule, how would I ensure that it is usable in twenty or fifty or more years? The International Time Capsule Society provides tips on creating a physical capsule. But what about the digital? At its …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
After launching on May 31, “The Signal” had a strong first month. We published 27 posts and are pleased to have had over 60 comments during June. The blog appears to reach a broad audience, which is exactly what we hoped for. Staff wrote about digital preservation outreach events, significant reports and publications, data forensics …
Posted in: Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Nowadays when we prepare a will, we have the added responsibility of leaving instructions to our loved ones about what to do with our online things after we die. Bequeathing has grown more complicated. Much of our online content consists of our writings – email, text, tweets, blogs, wikis and more – and our loved …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The following is a guest post by Erin Engle, Digital Archivist, NDIIPP. Imagine starting something from scratch. A home project, a work project, or maybe you’re even baking a cake, from scratch. Now imagine what the dedicated staff of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture are doing – they are building …
Posted in: Education and Training, Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
I keep lots of digital photographs. Hundreds—thousands?— of family members, colleagues and others reside in my collection and are, as Susan Sontag said, “illuminated by a flash, fixed forever.” As forever as I can manage, that is. Digital photos, like all computer files, are disturbingly prone to corruption and loss. As someone long involved with …
Posted in: Personal Archiving
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Over the past few years I have been organizing my family’s digital videos and digitizing our old videocassettes. All along I have tried to follow the personal digital archiving advice that my colleagues and I publish about organizing and backing up your personal collections. Now that I have collected, organized and stored our videos on …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
It’s many adults’ worst nightmare: how to entertain and (try to) educate thirty 8th graders for an hour? Especially when the subject matter is as potentially complex as how to preserve digital information. Well, the first thing to do is to try and think like the teenagers who visited the Library on May 13, 2011 …
Posted in: Outreach and Events, Personal Archiving