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Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Paul Wheatley of the SPRUCE Project, which is “aiming to foster a vibrant and self-supporting community of digital preservation practitioners and developers via a mixture of online interaction and face to face events.” For more on SPRUCE, see an earlier interview with Paul. A significant proportion of the project I’m currently …
Posted in: Partners and Collaboration, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
I am frequently asked about the difference between “traditional” preservation and digital preservation. My honest answer is that there are very few distinguishable differences. Preservation activities are never traditional – there is constant innovation in preservation techniques. Digital preservation is in many ways still developing its tools and techniques, but physical preservation is also evolving. …
Posted in: Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Raegan Swanson, Archivist with Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute. Reagan contacted members of the NDSA group working on the levels of digital preservation with her thoughts and comments and we were excited to offer her the opportunity to share her comments on the utility of the levels with a broader audience here on …
Posted in: NDSA, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
In June I did a post highlighting segments of the digital stewardship universe that could use applied research attention. I looked at the “what” of email archiving here and the “how” of email archiving here and now I turn my attention to format migration. The need to migrate file formats arises out of concerns about …
Posted in: Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
I’ve talked about Matthew Kirschenbaum’s work in a range of posts on digital objects here on The Signal. It seemed like it would be valuable to delve deeper into some of those discussions here in an interview. If you are unfamiliar, Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University …
Posted in: Digital Content, Education and Training, NDSA, Partners and Collaboration, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
The human rights organization, witness.org, — who gave a presentation at Digital Preservation 2013 — just published The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video. Though this guide is intended for human rights activists, it covers all aspects of digital video archiving so thoroughly that it is of value to anyone and everyone, from individuals archiving their …
Posted in: Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Leslie Johnston
A ten year-old recently asked what I do for a living. The response mostly involved explaining that the Library of Congress has digital collections and that I lead a team of people that take care of digital things, including writing software. I have often been asked by family, friends and complete strangers to explain what …
Posted in: Inside the Library, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
In early July I wrote about the “what” of email archiving. That is, “what” are we trying to preserve when we say we’re “preserving email.” It was admittedly a cursory look at the issue, but hopefully it’s a start for more thorough discussions down the road. This time I’ll dig in a little deeper and …
Posted in: Digital Content, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Preserving digital stuff for the future is a heavy responsibility. With digital photos, for instance, would it be possible someday to generate perfectly sharp high-density, high-resolution photos from blurry or low-resolution digital originals? Probably not but who knows? The technological future is unpredictable. The possibility invites the question: shouldn’t we save our digital photos at …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure