(NOTE: This is a reprinted and updated article from our digitalpreservation.gov website.) The motion picture industry is rapidly changing from film to digital media and within the next decade most movies will be shot, edited, distributed and projected digitally. Yet even as the industry embraces new technology, they may not be doing enough to archive …
While clearing out some personal clutter recently, I came across an old CD-ROM, published in 1989, that I always assumed was of great cultural value. Of course, when I tried to play it I got nothing but error messages and I set about finding a way to make it work. The CD-ROM is the Electronic …
“I just want to use it; I don’t want to know how it works.” – Unknown My Signal colleagues and I give out digital-preservation advice based on our research, our experiences and our understanding of best practices. We also try to pay attention to questions from the general public, with whom we interact at events …
Helen Tibbo is a descendant of Mayflower settlers Miles Standish and John Alden but she doesn’t flaunt her pedigree or socialize exclusively with snooty blue bloods. It’s difficult to say exactly how her Massachusetts cultural roots have defined her but she does embody bedrock New England characteristics such as self-reliance and practicality. And these traits …
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, …
The following is a guest post by Barrie Howard, Program Management Coordinator, NDIIPP. In my work at NDIIPP I’ve been looking at U.S. government grant programs that have funded digital preservation since 2000. I discovered that funding has been sourced primarily from the Library of Congress and four other agencies: the Institute of Museum and …
The following is a guest post by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. We are happy to announce the full open source release of the Recollection software platform. Briefly, Recollection is a web application that enables librarians, archivists, curators, and historians to create dynamic interfaces to cultural heritage collections. If you …
When Rebecca Guenther retires from the Library of Congress in August 2011, 35 years of institutional knowledge about bibliographic information will go with her. The Library of Congress loses – among other things – the world’s leading authority on PREMIS metadata for digital preservation. Guenther has nurtured conversations among international library stakeholders, conversations that led …
The computers that store and serve our digital collections are multiplying rapidly to keep up with our escalating data demands. All the while the servers guzzle power, radiate heat, crowd bandwidth and exert an unprecedented burden on the power grid. During these tough economic times, as institutions scrutinize their operations for budget-trimming opportunities, they must …
