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 […]
Category: archives
Digital Preservation Pioneer: Gary Marchionini
In 1971, Gary Marchionini had an epiphany about educational technology when he found himself competing with teletype machines for his students’ attention. Marchionini was teaching mathematics at a suburban Detroit junior high school the year that the school acquired four new teletype machines. The machines were networked to a computer, so a user could type […]
Preserving Vintage Electronic Literature
Dene (pronounced “Deenie”) Grigar’s mother was an artist who painted mainly with oils on canvas. But occasionally she painted on a different medium, such as wood or pottery. Once she experimented with painting on bamboo, a medium she was unfamiliar with. “Bamboo is porous,” said Grigar. “It can absorb the paint. So my mother compensated […]
The five stages to data sharing: Acceptance
Applying the Kübler-Ross model[1] to researchers and data sharing, based on various attitudes and comments we have encountered over the years. Don’t take the presentation seriously, but take the content seriously. Part five in a series of…uh, five. 5. Acceptance … Continue reading →
Content Matters: An Interview with Edward McCain of the Reynolds Journalism Institute
For this installment of the Content Matters interview series of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Content Working Group I interviewed Edward McCain, digital curator of journalism at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and the University of Missouri Libraries. The University of Missouri Libraries joined the NDSA this past summer. Ashenfelder: What is RJI’s relationship to […]
Digital Preservation Pioneer: Sam Brylawski
When Sam Brylawski was a teenager he had to write a paper for his high school American history class about Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” so he did something that was ambitious for a high school student: he traveled to the Library of Congress to examine the composition’s original manuscript in the Gershwin collection. Brylawski found […]
♫ Beep, Boop, La La La: The George Sanger Collection at UT Austin Videogame Archive
In 2007, George Sanger and three other videogame industry leaders collaborated with the University of Texas at Austin to create the UT Videogame Archive at the Briscoe Center for American History. Sanger — who is best known by his persona, The Fat Man– is an award-winning, groundbreaking composer and sound designer who has created audio for more than 250 […]
A New Guide for Archiving Digital Video
The human rights organization, witness.org, — who gave a presentation at Digital Preservation 2013 — just published The Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video. Though this guide is intended for human rights activists, it covers all aspects of digital video archiving so thoroughly that it is of value to anyone and everyone, from individuals archiving their […]
What People Are Asking About Personal Digital Archiving: Part 2
During Preservation Week 2013, I gave a personal digital archiving webinar in which over 600 people participated. Ninety one people submitted questions online and two-thirds of the questions centered on two topics: digital photos and storage. In part 1 of this blog post, I gave sample questions and answers about digital photos. Today I will give sample […]