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Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Dene (pronounced “Deenie”) Grigar’s mother was an artist who painted mainly with oils on canvas. But occasionally she painted on a different medium, such as wood or pottery. Once she experimented with painting on bamboo, a medium she was unfamiliar with. “Bamboo is porous,” said Grigar. “It can absorb the paint. So my mother compensated …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Information Today recently published Personal Archiving: Preserving Our Digital Heritage, a collection of essays written by some of the leading practitioners, thinkers and researchers in the emerging field of personal digital archiving. We are honored that Information Today — and especially the book’s editor, Donald Hawkins — asked us to share our resources and experiences …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
I’m sure these types of classes will become standard at every library at some point. – Jon Eriksen Public libraries are becoming the front lines in the spread of digital literacy. This is evident in the calls for action contained in the Institute of Museum and Library Science’s “Building Digital Communities” guide and in the …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
When Sam Brylawski was a teenager he had to write a paper for his high school American history class about Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” so he did something that was ambitious for a high school student: he traveled to the Library of Congress to examine the composition’s original manuscript in the Gershwin collection. Brylawski found …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
In 2007, George Sanger and three other videogame industry leaders collaborated with the University of Texas at Austin to create the UT Videogame Archive at the Briscoe Center for American History. Sanger — who is best known by his persona, The Fat Man– is an award-winning, groundbreaking composer and sound designer who has created audio for more than 250 …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
On a crisp, clear January day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Lucinda Marker and her husband, John Tull, stepped inside an Airstream trailer that StoryCorps converted into a mobile recording studio. Marker and Tull were there to interview each other for an audio memento, to reminisce and talk about significant moments in their shared lives, especially …
Posted in: Digital Content
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
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
During Preservation Week 2013, I gave a personal digital archiving webinar in which over 600 people participated. Ninety one people submitted questions online and two-thirds of the questions centered on two topics: digital photos and storage. In part 1 of this blog post, I gave sample questions and answers about digital photos. Today I will give sample …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
Clifford Lynch is widely regarded as an oracle in the culture of networked information. Lynch monitors the global information ecosystem for cultural trends and technological developments. He ponders their variables, interdependencies and influencing factors. He confers with colleagues and draws conclusions. Then he reports his observations through lectures, conference presentations and writings. People who know …
Posted in: Digital Content