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Category: Digital Content

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“Volun-peers” Help Liberate Smithsonian Digital Collections

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The Smithsonian Transcription Center creates indexed, searchable text by means of crowdsourcing…or as Meghan Ferriter, project coordinator at the TC describes it, “harnessing the endless curiosity and goodwill of the public.” As of the end of the current fiscal year, 7,060 volunteers at the TC have transcribed 208,659 pages. The scope, planning and execution of the …

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New FADGI Guidelines for Embedded Metadata in DPX Files

Posted by: Kate Murray

The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Audio-Visual Working Group is pleased to announce that its new draft publication, Embedding Metadata in Scanned Motion Picture Film Files: Guideline for Federal Agency Use of DPX Files, is available for public comment. The Digital Picture Exchange format typically stores image-only data from scanned motion picture film or born-digital …

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Wisdom is Learned: An Interview with Applications Developer Ashley Blewer

Posted by: Jaime Mears

  Ashley Blewer is an archivist, moving image specialist and developer who works at the New York Public Library. In her spare time she helps develop open source AV file conformance and QC software as well as standards such as Matroska and FFV1. She’s a three time Association of American Moving Image Archivists’ AV Hack …

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Conference Report: Digital Library Federation 2016 Forum

Posted by: Jaime Mears

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) 2016 Forum was held alongside the DLF Liberal Arts Colleges Pre-Conference and Digital Preservation 2016 this year from November 6-10 at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Self-described as a  ”meeting place, marketplace, and congress“ of digital librarians from member institutions and the wider community, the conference, under the leadership of Bethany Nowviskie, set a …

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Initiatives at the Library of Congress (Digital Preservation 2016 Talk)

Posted by: Jaime Mears

Here’s the text of the presentation I gave during the Initiatives panel at Digital Preservation 2016, held in collaboration with the DLF Forum on November 10, 2016. This presentation is about what the National Digital Initiatives division has been up to in FY16 and what’s coming up in FY17. For a report on the DLF Forum, see this Signal post. …

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User Experience (UX) Design in Libraries: An Interview with Natalie Buda Smith

Posted by: Jaime Mears

  Natalie Buda Smith is the User Experience (UX) Team supervisor at the Library of Congress, and most recently worked with NDI to design the beautiful graphic for our Collections as Data conference. Her team has been busy redesigning Loc.gov, and the new homepage is set to debut Tuesday, Nov.1st. We caught up over coffee …

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Data and Humanism Shape Library of Congress Conference

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The presentations at the Library of Congress’ Collections As Data conference coalesced into two main themes: 1) digital collections are composed of data that can be acquired,  processed and displayed in countless scientific and creative ways and 2) we should always be aware and respectful that data is manipulated by — and derived from — people. …

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NDI Talk at Collections as Data

Posted by: Kate Zwaard

Here’s the text of the talk I gave last week at the Collections as Data event my group hosted on September 27, 2016. If you would like to watch it, the talk starts at about minute 54 of the video of the event. Welcome to Collections as Data! I’m excited to tell you about our …

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Collections as Data Tomorrow

Posted by: Kate Zwaard

Tomorrow, September 27, 2016, NDI is hosting our Collections as Data symposium, which will be free and open to the public. We’re really excited about the speakers we have lined up for the day, and hope you can join is in person or through the live-streamed video. In preparation for the event, our colleagues in …