In addition to the ongoing challenge of direct digital preservation there are other related activities that are crucial to this effort. Lots of things, actually – that are not directly “preservation” activities but do affect the digital preservation end result. Things such as metadata – which I’d like to focus on here, and using music …
The following is a guest post by Nicholas Taylor, Information Technology Specialist for the Web Archiving Team. If science reporters, IT industry pundits and digital storage and network infrastructure purveyors are to be believed, devices are being lab-tested even now that can store all of the data in the Library of Congress or transmit it …
The following is a guest post by Barrett Jones, Program Specialist for the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education initiative at the Library. Right now as I type this post, there is a two-hour Introduction to Digital Preservation online course available from the State Library of North Carolina Digital Information Management Program. On July 25th there’s …
The following is a guest post by Abbey Potter, Program Officer, NDIIPP, and Communications Officer, IIPC. You’ve no doubt heard this catch phrase made popular by Tim Gunn from the reality competition show Project Runway. It is the advice he gives harried contestants who are trying to create a fabulous dress in under two hours …
I was recently asked a question that I had never considered before: If I wanted to create a digital time capsule, how would I ensure that it is usable in twenty or fifty or more years? The International Time Capsule Society provides tips on creating a physical capsule. But what about the digital? At its …
The following is a guest post by Jimi Jones, Audio-Visual Specialist, NDIIPP. A correction was made to this post on July 7, 2011. “What’s the best digital video file format for preservation?” Finding appropriate digital preservation file formats for audiovisual materials is not an easy task. While much of the recorded sound preservation realm has …
The following is a guest post by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist with the Office of Strategic Initiatives. For my first post, I wanted to introduce readers to Recollection, a free and open tool NDIIPP is working on. Recollection is a free, open source platform that lets archivists, librarians, scholars and curators create easy to navigate …
Nowadays when we prepare a will, we have the added responsibility of leaving instructions to our loved ones about what to do with our online things after we die. Bequeathing has grown more complicated. Much of our online content consists of our writings – email, text, tweets, blogs, wikis and more – and our loved …
This is a map. Of course, it’s not just any map. It’s the Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes from 1507, otherwise known as the Waldseemüller map after its creator, Martin Waldseemüller. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as …