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Posted by: Trevor Owens
What does it mean to acquire something, like a set of animated .gifs, that are already widely available on the web? Archives and Museums are often focused on acquiring, preserving and making accessible rare or unique documents, records, objects and artifacts. While someone might take a photo of an object, or reproduce it in any …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Kate Murray
In response to a suggestion from our active membership, the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group recently hosted a discussion about preserving digital and software-based artworks. Interestingly, the suggestion for this topic came not from a museum staffer but by Winston Atkins, Preservation Officer at Duke University Libraries. Complex materials like digital art works and …
Posted in: Digital Content, NDSA, Partners and Collaboration, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
Yesterday’s blog post described some of the federal government initiatives that have driven data management requirements over the past ten years or so. “Data management” is a hot job area right now, and if you tilt the digital stewardship universe a certain direction, almost everything we do falls under the rubric of “data management.” Data …
Posted in: NDSA, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
How are researchers and scholars going to make use of born-digital primary sources? It’s an open question which many working in digital preservation are interested in. As part of the NDSA innovation working group’s ongoing Insights interview series I am excited to talk with Zach Whalen, an english professor at the University of Mary Washington, …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
What does the history of the MP3 format mean for those interested in ensuring long-term access to our digital cultural heritage? In this installment of the NDSA’s Insights interview series I talk with historian Jonathan Sterne about his book MP3: The Meaning of a Format. You can read the introduction to his book, titled “Format …
Posted in: Digital Content, Insights Interview, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Jane Mandelbaum, co-chair of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working group and IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. The NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation are useful in providing a high-level, at-a-glance overview of tiered guidance for planning for digital preservation. One of the most common requests received …
Posted in: NDSA, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
Continuing the insights interview series, I’m excited to share this conversation with Meg Phillips, External Affairs Liaison at the National Archives and Records Administration. A few years back we “un-chaired” CURATEcamp Processing: Processing Data/Processing Collections together. Meg wrote a guest post reflecting on that event for the Signal titled More Product, Less Process for Born-Digital …
Posted in: Digital Content, NDSA, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post by Jefferson Bailey, Strategic Initiatives Manager at Metropolitan New York Library Council, National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group co-chair and a former Fellow in the Library of Congress’s Office of Strategic Initiatives. Here on The Signal, members of the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation team have been providing some …
Posted in: NDSA, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Butch Lazorchak
By Butch Lazorchak and Trevor Owens We’ve talked in the past on the Signal on the need more applied research in digital preservation and stewardship. This is a key issue addressed by the 2014 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship, which dives in a little deeper to suggest that there’s a great need to strengthen the …
Posted in: Digital Content, NDSA, Publications and Resources, Tools and Infrastructure