Who Do You Want to Be Today?

I lead a group that develops software for the management, preservation and delivery of digital collections.  In some organizations, digital preservation is part of the physical preservation unit.  In some organizations, software development is part of the systems office.  Or software development might be part of a central IT unit. I work with colleagues who …

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Learning to Live With Failures With A Little Help From Redundancy and Diversity

The following is a guest post from Andrea Goethals, digital preservation and repository services manager at the Harvard University library. This post is similar to a presentation I gave as part of a panel called “Assessing and Mitigating Bit-Level Preservation Risks” at DigitalPreservation 2012. It grew out of conversations and work within the NDSA Infrastructure …

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More Product, Less Process for Born-Digital Collections: Reflections on CurateCamp Processing

The following is a guest post from  Meg Phillips, Electronic Records Lifecycle Coordinator for the National Archives and Records Administration. “What’s the bare minimum I can responsibly do with my electronic stuff?” was one of the central questions on the table at  CurateCamp Processing. The unconference,  focused on Processing Data / Processing Collections, was a …

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Getting the DigPres411: An Interview with Lisa Gregory of State Library of North Carolina

The five recipients of the inaugural National Digital Stewardship Alliance innovation awards are exemplars of the creativity, diversity and collaboration essential to supporting the digital community as it works to preserve and make available digital materials. In an effort to learn more and share the work of the individuals, projects and institutions who won these …

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WARCreate and Future Stewardship: An interview with Mat Kelly

The five recipients of the inaugural NDSA innovation awards are exemplars of the creativity, diversity, and collaboration essential to supporting the digital community as it works to preserve and make available digital materials. In an effort to learn more and share the work of the individuals, projects and institutions who won these awards I am …

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Digital Strategy Catches up With the Present: An Interview with Smithsonian’s Michael Edson

For this installment of Insights, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group’s ongoing series of interviews, I talk with Michael Edson, the Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution. Edson gave a compelling talk at last year’s NDIIPP/NDSA conference, Let Us Go Boldly into the Present I’m excited to take …

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Prognosticating Digital Preservation Infrastructure: Final Results from the NDSA Storage Survey

The following is a guest post by Jefferson Bailey, Fellow at the Library of Congress’s Office of Strategic Initiatives. Over the last few months, we have been reporting results from the storage survey conducted by the NDSA Infrastructure Working Group, one of the five working groups of the The National Digital Stewardship Alliance. See the …

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Digital Disaster Planning: Get the Picture Before Losing the Picture

The following is a guest post by Chelcie Rowell, 2012 Junior Fellow. Frequency of occurring? Rare. Impact of occurring? Huge. I’m talking about digital disasters. Stewards of digital content, like stewards of analog content, must plan for catastrophe in advance in order to minimize loss and recover quickly. True, digital disasters may occur infrequently. But at …

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