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Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
Last October, I wrote about The Atlas of Digital Damages on Flickr. The idea was that it would be instructive to showcase digital content that suffered from problems roughly equivalent to physical content that was deteriorating due to mistakes or neglect. Since I last wrote about it, the atlas has acquired more examples reflecting all kinds of …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
A recent post from the Library of Congress’s main blog outlined some of the riches at the Library of Congress in connection with the 1963 March on Washington. Picture This, the blog for our Prints and Photographs Division also recently highlighted some recently digitized photographs from the march. In the spirit of the 50th anniversary, …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
We write frequently on this blog about the value of personal digital archiving–empowering people to pass on digital memories to their families and others. We’ve always seen public libraries as key allies in promoting personal archiving, and have highlighted libraries that undertake outreach and training in this area. There is a related role for public libraries and …
Posted in: Digital Content, Personal Archiving, Publications and Resources
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a Guest Post by Abbie Grotke, the Library of Congress Web Archiving Team Lead and Co-Chair of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Content Working Group. We’re excited to finally announce something a team of Library staff has been involved with for over a year now – a big project to integrate the Library’s web archives …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
I started writing before computers were commonly available. But, unlike some who are nostalgic for the era of pen and ink, I feel only joy about relying on machines in my struggle to communicate with written language. My handwriting was inelegant from the start. I never bothered to ask if neatness counted, because it didn’t …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
A smart-alecky way to answer the question in the title above would be: “why everything, of course.” But we don’t traffic in snark here, at least not intentionally. User expectations influence so much of what stewardship organizations do. We collect and preserve all content primarily to support use, but the issue is especially important in …
Posted in: Digital Content
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
The following is a guest post by Nicholas Taylor, Data Specialist for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. A previous post on this blog explored why it’s so hard to come up with a reliable measurement of the average lifespan of a webpage. In essence, the argument came down to this: links and the …
Posted in: Digital Content, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post from Vidya Vish, The Library of Congress Contracting Officer for the Third Party Digitization RFP. The Library’s collections include tens of millions of items – not just books, but also manuscripts, monographs, serials, newspapers, pamphlets, sound recordings, films, videos, sheet music, photographs, posters, microfilm and maps. Our collections are at …
Posted in: Digital Content, Partners and Collaboration, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Bill LeFurgy
This is a guest post by Susan Garfinkel, research specialist, Digital Reference Section at the Library of Congress. Electronic literature—past, future and present—is the focus of a free three-day program at the Library of Congress, April 3 to 5. The Electronic Literature Showcase, sponsored by the Library’s Digital Reference Section, includes a variety of events designed …
Posted in: Digital Content, Inside the Library, Outreach and Events