Today’s guest post is from Joe Puccio, Collection Development Officer at the Library of Congress. Tremendous progress has been made by the Library of Congress in acquiring born-digital content as part of a coordinated strategy presented in its 2017 Digital Collecting Plan and previously reported in the Signal. With that plan now in its fifth […]
Category: Tools and Infrastructure
LC Labs Letter: November 2020
November’s monthly newsletter from the LC Labs team.
An Archivist’s Perspective on Legacy Files
In this post, 2020 Staff Innovator Chad Conrady discusses his area of expertise, emulation, which imitates older operating systems in order to open outdated or legacy files that are no longer operable with contemporary operating systems or software.
LC Labs Letter: October 2020
October’s monthly newsletter from the LC Labs team.
Analyzing the Born-Digital Archive
Kathleen O’Neill is a 2020 Staff Innovator with LC Labs and a Senior Archivist in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. In this post, she discusses her analysis of the various file formats in the Manuscript Division’s born-digital holdings.
Designing for the (Citizen) DJ
Brian Foo reflects on the feedback from user testing he incorporated into the final design of Citizen DJ.
LC Labs Letter: September 2020
September’s monthly newsletter from the LC Labs team.
Newspaper Navigator Search Application Now Live!
On September 15, 2020, the Library of Congress announced the release of Newspaper Navigator, an experimental web application which makes 1.5 million photographs from the dataset from Chronicling America available to the public to explore for the first time. Read more about the design and features of the project below or jump straight to the newly launched application at https://news-navigator.labs.loc.gov/search !
Metaphors for Understanding Born Digital Collection Access: Part III
Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born digital materials through the lens of three different metaphors. Up first was “Media Format, or, Have Fun Storming the Castle!” The second blog post discussed “Legacy File Formats and Operating Systems or Lost in Translation.” This is the third and final post in the series and Kathleen carefully explains the process of emulation and makes it feel less like “strange magic.”
Metaphors for Understanding Born Digital Collection Access: Part II
Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born digital materials even before they reach researchers. This is the second post in the series and focuses on legacy file formats through the metaphor of being “lost in translation.”