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In an ongoing commitment to keep up with the changing world of preservation, the Library of Congress is doing it’s annual review of its “Recommended Formats Statement”. The stated purposes of the document are: One purpose of the Statement is to provide internal guidance within the Library to help inform acquisitions of collections materials (other than […]
Cryogenically freezing the DNA of livestock animals might sound like a science fiction twist to Noah’s Ark, yet it’s the mission of a newly forged partnership called The Smithsonian and Swiss Village Farm (SVF) Foundation Biodiversity Project. The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the SVF Foundation announced in late July that they have joined forces to preserve rare and endangered heritage breeds of livestock, animals that our American forefathers raised for agriculture. Over the next several years, the SVF Foundation’s collection of frozen genetic materials will be incorporated into the Smithsonian’s vast genetic library of endangered animal species.
The Library of Congress has now made specific recommendations on the best file formats for preserving access to content of various types: Textual works and musical compositions Still images Audio Moving images Software, electronic games, and learning modules Datasets and databases They take pains to explain that these recommendations are not meant to replace their […]
The American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) research library last month hosted the official launch of its new online image database for Digital Special Collections. Begun as a project to digitize 1,000 of the museum’s photos and rare book illustrations, the Digital Special Collections program has evolved into a long-term project that will offer the public free online access to the museum’s research library collection. The new database includes more than 7,000 archival images, including photographs from 19th century scientific expeditions and illustrations from rare books dating back to the 16th century.
By August I will have published the current awareness newsletter Current Cites every month for twenty-four years — with all but the first of those years (1990-1991) freely available on the Internet. My children, now in college, aren’t even that old. In fact, my only absence from its publication was the period shortly after their birth. […]
With the help of Operation Photo Rescue, a non-profit, volunteer network of photographers, image restoration artists, and graphic designers, Fondulac District Library (FDL), IL, recently launched “Saving Memories,” a program to help community members digitize and restore photographs that were damaged when 24 tornadoes touched down in Illinois on the night of November 17.
The South Carolina State Library (SCSL) has launched the South Carolina State Agency Social Media Library, a new project that will archive all tweets, Facebook posts, and YouTube content generated by the official accounts of South Carolina’s state agencies, while simplifying public access to this social media activity via a single online portal at scsocialmedialibrary.org. The portal and the archive were developed in collaboration with ArchiveSocial, a for-profit social media archiving company based in Durham, NC.
All of the Big Six publishers are now working with libraries on ebook lending in some capacity, but pricing and licensing terms remain unfavorable in many cases, Saturday’s “ALA, Ebooks, and Digital Content: What’s Next?” panel at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago concluded. Meanwhile, concerns about long-term preservation of ebooks and […]
From a LC Announcement: The Library of Congress today unveiled “The Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan,” a blueprint for saving America’s recorded sound heritage for future generations. The congressionally mandated plan spells out 32 short- and long-term recommendations involving both the public and private sectors and covering infrastructure, preservation, access, education and policy […]
I can’t begin to recall how many times I have relied on the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” to fetch a file that I had inadvertently deleted without a backup. Or checked out how bad my web design was back in 1996. I mean, srsly. So I was delighted to see that the Wayback Machine had […]
