A new thread emerged during the recent monthly conference calls of the Standards and Practices Working Group of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA). What do we do about preserving video? It’s a problem for many of our members. One participant even commented that video is often the last content type to be added to […]
Category: audiovisual file formats
Personal Digital Archiving: The Basics of Scanning
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 […]
It’s Not Just Integrity: Fixity Data in Digital Sound and Moving Image Files
This blog post is co-authored by Carl Fleischhauer, Project Manager, Digital Initiatives, Library of Congress. People who manage audio and video files over time, do create fixity data, aka hash values or checksums, to help monitor the condition of those files in storage and when moved from one system or media to another system or […]
Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Guiding Principles for Creating Born Digital Video
The beginning is a very fine place to start indeed for the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Born Digital Video subgroup of the Audio-Visual Working Group. As mentioned in a previous blog post, the FADGI Born Digital Video subgroup is taking a close look at the range of decisions to be made throughout the lifecycle […]
Saving Digital Mementos from Virtual Worlds
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 […]
AV Artifact Atlas: By the People, For the People
In this interview, FADGI talks with Hannah Frost, Digital Library Services Manager at Stanford Libraries and Manager, Stanford Media Preservation Lab and Jenny Brice, Preservation Coordinator at Bay Area Video Coalition about the AV Artifact Atlas. One of my favorite aspects of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative is its community-based ethos. We work collaboratively […]
Can I Get a Sample of That? Digital File Format Samples and Test Sets
If you’ve ever been to a warehouse store on a weekend afternoon, you’ve experienced the power of the sample. In the retail world, samples are an important tool to influence potential new customers who don’t want to invest in an unknown entity. I certainly didn’t start the day with lobster dip on my shopping list […]
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 […]
One Format Does Not Fit All: FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group’s Diverse Approaches to Format Guidance
This is the first in a two-part update on the recent activities of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative. This article describes the work of the Audio-Visual Working Group. The second article, to be published on November 4th 2013, describes the work of the Still Image Working Group. I wish I had a quick and […]