“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 Jimi Jones, Audiovisual Specialist, and Carla Miller, Administrative Specialist, at the Library of Congress. The NDSA Standards and Best Practices Working Group is working on a digital preservation standards survey that has the following objectives: • Identify and describe existing digital preservation standards and best practices • Identify …
NCCUSL. If pronounced a certain way (think “nah-kooz-ull”) it sounds like the latest toy fad. But get used to the acronym because the organization behind it is responsible for one of the most important pieces of digital preservation legislation in the past ten years. NCCUSL stands for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State …
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 …
Enhanced access to historical resources drives the incentives to preserve. At least that’s the thinking behind the Model Technological and Social Architecture for the Preservation of State Government Digital Information Project. The project, headed by the Minnesota Historical Society with state government partners in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee and Vermont, …
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 …
