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Category: Digital Content

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Personal Digital Archiving 2014

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

The fifth annual Personal Digital Archiving conference is on April 10-11 and you can still register online until tomorrow, April 1. This conference attracts a variety of information-technology professionals with a range of digital-preservation interests, mainly oriented toward the needs of individuals rather than the digital collections of cultural institutions. Topics include – but are …

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Personal Digital Archiving: The Basics of Scanning

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

Although the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and the National Digital Stewardship Alliance focus on digital preservation and access, many of the personal digital archiving questions that the general public ask us are about scanning. Though scanning is a separate issue from digital preservation, scanning does generate digital files that need to be …

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Digital Preservation Pioneer: Bill LeFurgy

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

Bill LeFurgy makes gentle stretching motions with his hands as he demonstrates how he exercises his cat’s legs every night. Clarence, his cat, just had hip surgery and LeFurgy has to serve as his physical therapist for the next two months. This routine, this new responsibility, comes at a time when he is about to …

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Saving Mementos from Virtual Worlds

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

My two young teenage daughters spend hours playing Minecraft, building elaborate virtual landscapes and structures. They are far from alone; the game has millions of fans around the world. Teachers are seizing on Minecraft’s popularity with kids as a tool to teach both abstract and concrete subjects. What’s unique about this situation is not so much …

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Rescuing and Digitally Preserving the Cultural Heritage of the Great Smoky Mountains

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

In western North Carolina, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, rests a boulder covered in prehistoric petroglyphs attributed to the Native Americans who have resided in the area for thousands of years. Experts debate the specific origin and meaning of the glyphs but the general interpretation describes Judaculla, a human-like giant with supernatural …

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Illinois Library Offers Digital Preservation Aid in Response to Tornado Devastation

Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder

It was raining hard on Sunday morning November 17, 2013, as librarian Genna (pronounced “Gina”) Buhr anxiously watched the Weather Channel coverage of the storm system battering central Illinois. Buhr, Public Services Manager at Illinois’ Fondulac District Library, was visiting her parents in Utica, Illinois, about an hour north of Buhr’s home. Her two young …