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Category: Tools and Infrastructure

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I Can Haz Standardz: What Standards Should be in the Digital Preservation Toolbox?

Posted by: Butch Lazorchak

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 …

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Digital Pioneer: Rebecca Guenther

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

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 …

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The “End of Term” Was Only the Beginning

Posted by: Butch Lazorchak

The following is a guest post by Laura Graham, a Digital Media Project Coordinator at the Library. In late 2008, the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas, the Internet Archive and the Government Printing Office began the first collaborative project to capture and archive United States government web sites …

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Tending the Machines

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

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 …

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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 …