This is a guest post by Elizabeth Kelly, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Loyola University New Orleans, and Cheylon Woods, Archivist/Head of Ernest J. Gaines Center at University of Louisiana Lafayette. Participants from the inaugural Digital Preservation Outreach & Education (DPOE) Train–the–Trainer in the Deep South recently delivered digital preservation training to library practitioners in the …
This is a guest post by Andrea Goethals, Manager of Digital Preservation and Repository Services at Harvard Library. Harvard Library’s digital preservation program has evolved a great deal since the first incarnation of its digital preservation repository (“the DRS”) was put into production in October 2000. Over the years, we have produced 3GB worth of …
This is a guest post by Mary Kendig, a student of the Master of Information Science program and the research coordinator for the DCIC Center at the University of Maryland. The Problem With the explosive emergence of computers and information technology since the 1960’s, electronic records have overwhelmed librarians and archivists. Federal agencies have responded …
This is a guest post by Kate Murray, IT Specialist in the Library of Congress’s Digital Collections and Management Services. The Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats Web site (informally just known as “Formats”) details and analyzes the technical aspects of digital formats with a focus towards strategic planning regarding formats for digital content, …
In February, we hosted 40 librarians, archivists and data wranglers at the Library of Congress to learn advanced skills in managing digital collections. National Digital Initiatives (NDI/NP/NIO) hosted a Software Carpentry workshop, inviting staff from the Library, the DC Public Library and federal libraries for hands-on learning in the programming language Python, the version-control software …
This is a guest post from Alice Prael, Digital Accessioning Archivist for Yale Special Collections at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. As digital storage technology progresses, many archivists are left with boxes of obsolete storage media, such as floppy disks and ZIP disks. These physical storage media plague archives that …
This is a guest post by Joe Puccio, the Collection Development Officer at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has steadily increased its digital collecting capacity and capability over the past two decades. This has come as the product of numerous independent efforts pointed to the same goal – acquire as much selected …
Mass digitization — coupled with new media, technology and distribution networks — has transformed what’s possible for libraries and their users. The Library of Congress makes millions of items freely available on loc.gov and other public sites like HathiTrust and DPLA. Incredible resources — like digitized historic newspapers from across the United States, the personal papers …
This is a guest post by Joe Carrano, a resident in the National Digital Stewardship Residency program. The Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library is at home among the many Brutalist-style buildings in and around Washington, D.C. This granite-chip aggregate structure, the main library at Georgetown University, houses a moderate-sized staff that provides critical information needs …