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Category: Tools and Infrastructure

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1000 Years (Give or Take a Few) of Digital Mapping

Posted by: Butch Lazorchak

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 …

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The First Decade of Web Archiving at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The following is a guest post by Abbie Grotke,  Web Archiving Team Lead at the Library of Congress. Eleven years ago, the Library of Congress established a pilot web archiving project to study methods to evaluate, select, collect, catalog, provide access to and preserve at-risk born digital content for future generations. We could write a …

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Digital Pioneer: Andrea Goethals

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

When Andrea Goethals wants to escape the demands of her software engineering work at Harvard University library, she heads to the mountains of Maine. But not for pampered leisure. She and her husband volunteer with the Appalachian Mountain Club, maintaining a trail they’ve both adopted. They purge debris, drain water and remove massive obstacles. On …

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Linked Open Data: A Beckoning Paradise

Posted by: Bill LeFurgy

The following is a guest post by Gloria Gonzalez, a 2011 Junior Fellow working with NDIIPP. Imagine an internet where every single webpage interconnects to other related information. While browsing a site about the history of the United States, for example, you could see digital versions of the documents that established it–with the click of …

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Turning the Clock Forward

Posted by: Martha Anderson

The diaries of George Washington, the first map that used the name “America,” jazz recordings from the 1920s, pictures from presidential inaugurations—the Library of Congress has a very diverse collection of documents, recordings, pictures and maps that help us understand the story of our nation. Most discussions of saving cultural heritage information involve looking into …

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A Meeting of the Minds for UDFR

Posted by: Susan Manus

There is a new collaboration under way, which is community driven, international in scope, and will be an invaluable resource for the entire digital library community.  The “Unified Digital Formats Registry” is a project with the ambitious goal of providing online access and open information sharing for the entire range of digital format information. A …

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Insights: Interview with David Rosenthal

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The following is a guest post by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist, NDIIPP. I’m excited to launch a new series, Insights, for The Signal. Insights will feature interviews and conversations between National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation working group members and individuals working on projects related to preservation, access and stewardship of digital information. We are thrilled …