The best type of program is an interlocking system of policies, workflows, technical solutions, and efforts meant to keep digital objects usable in the long term. Digital objects are made up of bitstreams—sequences of 1s and 0s that require specific software and hardware environments to remain accessible. Some are born digital (those materials with no … Continue reading Preservation as Risk Management
The debate was moderated by Kara McClurken, director of preservation services at the University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville. The panel took place as part of the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans Monday, June 25. As the debate opened, McClurken explained that some of the debaters had been asked to defend … Continue reading Preservation Showdown: Environmental Edition
First, Steve Zalusky, manager of communications for the American Library Association’s Public Awareness Office, reports from the Mostly Lost film workshop at the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia. Next, Phil Morehart, Dewey Decibel host and American Libraries associate editor, talks to AJ Lawrence, media conservation and digitization assistant at the … Continue reading Dewey Decibel Podcast: Saving Lost Cinema
For community-based or other participatory archive models, digital technologies offer a way to meaningfully engage with materials. Yet what good is a digital archive if the community does not have internet available? How can an individual fully participate in using or shaping digital heritage resources if they do not have the computer skills, or even … Continue reading What Is Access without Equity?
As we observe Preservation Week (April 22–26), keep in mind that even our youngest students are eager to hear about cultural and historic preservation from the people most invested in it. Our learners realize that everybody has a story and that these stories make a difference. My own preservation journey with 3rd graders at Pilot … Continue reading To Preserve and Protect
This didn’t make sense—the books had been in an area of the library considered very dry by Hawaii standards (relative humidity in the 40s and sometimes 50s) ever since a temperature and humidity data logger was deployed there in late 2008. Mold is commonplace in Hawaii and is something UHM library has battled for years. … Continue reading The Mysterious Case of White Film on Old Books
Nearly 200 people had gathered for a labor of love and a test of their research skills and knowledge of film history June 15–17 at the Library of Congress’s (LC) Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia. The 45-acre campus is where LC acquires, preserves, and provides access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive … Continue reading Crowdsourcing Cinema
Libraries have been collecting audio and video for many years, and audiovisual librarians well know the value of voices and moving images. Within the profession itself, Technical Services Manager A. Arro Smith—author of Capturing Our Stories: An Oral History of Librarianship in Transition (ALA Editions, 2017)—has been chronicling the oral histories of retired librarians on … Continue reading Saving At-Risk Audiovisual Materials
Document capture at Crowley Imaging Services The Crowley Company has been providing micrographic and digital archiving services for more than 30 years. Crowley Imaging Services uses equipment from its own manufacturing arm and other vendors to offer services to libraries and archives that don’t have an in-house digitization department. The company recently purchased two Phase One IQ3 … Continue reading Saving Your Media
On Monday, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services held a session on “Saving Collections, Sharing Expertise: The FIPNet Collaboration across Library Specialties,” which explored the efforts of the Government Publishing Office (GPO) to preserve government information in both tangible and digital format.
“This is the job of my dreams,” says Becky Ryder, director of Keeneland Library. Founded in 1939, the public research and reference library is one of the largest sources of equine industry information. It holds hundreds of thousands of thoroughbred-related books, articles, and photographic negatives, such as the Daily Racing Form’s archives and materials on … Continue reading And They’re Off!
At a Sunday morning Midwinter session, presenters Chris Prom, Cara Bertram, and Denise Rayman, all from the U of I library, discussed the open-access repository, known as the ALA Institutional Repository (ALAIR), which has more than 3,000 cubic feet of physical records and more than 460 GB of digital records from the various divisions, offices, … Continue reading Preserving the Association’s History
