Researchers, of varying technical abilities, are increasingly applying data science tools and methods to digital collections. As a result, new ways are emerging for processing and analyzing the digital collections’ raw material — the data. For example, instead of pondering one single digital item at a time – such as a news story, photo or […]
Category: access
Data Migration, Digital Asset Management and Microservices at CUNY TV
This is a guest post from Dinah Handel. For the past six months, I’ve been immersed in the day to day operations of the archive and library at CUNY Television, a public television station located at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. My National Digital Stewardship residency has consisted of a […]
Data Migration, Digital Asset Management and Microservices at CUNY TV
This is a guest post from Dinah Handel. For the past six months, I’ve been immersed in the day to day operations of the archive and library at CUNY Television, a public television station located at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. My National Digital Stewardship residency has consisted of a […]
Tracking Digital Collections at the Library of Congress, from Donor to Repository
When Kathleen O’Neill talks about digital collections, she slips effortlessly into the info-tech language that software engineers, librarians, archivists and other information technology professionals use to communicate with each other. O’Neill, a senior archives specialist in the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division, speaks with authority about topics such as file signatures, hex editors and checksums even […]
“Elementary!” A Sleuth Activity for Personal Digital Archiving
As large institutions and organizations continue to implement preservation processes for their digital collections, a smattering of self-motivated information professionals are trying to reach out to the rest of the world’s digital preservation stakeholders — individuals and small organizations — to help them manage their digital collections. Part of that challenge is just making people aware that: […]
WITNESS: Digital Preservation (in Plain Language) as a Tool for Justice
Some of you information professionals may have experienced incidents where, in the middle of a breezy conversation, you get caught off guard by a question about your work (“What do you do?”) and you struggle to come up with a straightforward, clear answer without losing the listener’s attention or narcotizing them into a stupor with […]
The Library of Congress Wants Your File Format Ideas
In June of this year, the Library of Congress announced a list of formats it would prefer for digital collections. This list of recommended formats is an ongoing work; the Library will be reviewing the list and making revisions for an updated version in June 2015. Though the team behind this work continues to put […]
Perpetual Access and Digital Preservation at #SAA14
I had the distinct pleasure of moderating the opening plenary session of the Joint Annual Meeting of COSA, NAGARA and SAA in Washington D.C. in early August. The panel was on the “state of access,” and I shared the dais with David Cuillier, an Associate Professor and Director of the University of Arizona School of […]
Untangling the Knot of CAD Preservation
At the 2014 Society of American Archivists meeting, the CAD/BIM Taskforce held a session titled “Frameworks for the Discussion of Architectural Digital Data” to consider the daunting matter of archiving computer-aided design and Building Information Modelling files. This was the latest evidence that — despite some progress in standards and file exchange — archivists and the […]
Rescuing and Digitally Preserving the Cultural Heritage of the Great Smoky Mountains
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 […]