April 30th is Personal Archiving Day!

LoC brings us "Personal Archiving Day". I think I'll take this opportunity to back up my laptop and check on that box of photos under my bed...

"Pass it On: Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress is a free public event taking place on Saturday, April 30, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event will provide information about preserving personal and family photographs in both digital and non-digital form. No reservations are needed.

Library staff will be on hand to talk directly with individuals about how to manage and preserve their pictorial treasures. There will also be videos and printed information available.

The event will take place in Room 119 of the Jefferson Building, located at 1st Street S.E., between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street. For information about visiting the Library see http://www.loc.gov/visit/. For security reasons we ask attendees not bring collection materials to the event. No appraisals will be provided.

Personal Archiving Day at the Library of Congress celebrates Preservation Week (April 24-30). This joint initiative of the Library of Congress, the American Library Association, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and others, highlights libraries and other collecting institutions as excellent sources of preservation information.

“It is a great pleasure for us to be able to help families preserve their photograph collections,” said Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives. “Digital technology in particular provides new challenges and opportunities to keeping photographs accessible over time and across generations.”

Dr. Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, says ”Many of the collections currently held by the Library of Congress came originally from personal collectors It is in the best interest of the Library to help families preserve memorabilia that help trace the history of our communities and nation.”

A 50-second video preview of the event is available at: http://digitalpreservation.gov/videos/digipresweek2011/index.html

To learn more about the event and to sign up for free digital preservation updates, please visit http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/. To learn more about preservation visit the Preservation Directorate Website."

Why Digital Preservation is Important for Everyone

Check out this great video put out by the Library of Congress:

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/videos/digipres/index.html

"Traditional information sources such as books, photos and sculptures can easily survive for years, decades or even centuries but digital items are fragile and require special care to keep them useable. Rapid technological changes also affect digital preservation. As new technologies appear, older ones become obsolete, making it difficult to access older content

This video explores the complex nature of the problem, how digital content – unlike content on traditional media -- depends on technology to make it available and requires active management to ensure its ongoing accessibility."

-- Videos - Digital Preservation (Library of Congress)

The Meaning of "Digital"

The meaning of the word "digital" can be a tricky one to nail down. It is often thrown around rather haphazardly, to the point where it's almost been abused. Things get especially confusing when people start talking about "electronic", rather than "digital".

I recently had such an experience. While speaking with some archivists, both the terms "electronic" and "digital" came up in relation to records the archive had to deal with. Several faces became clouded in confusion before one brave soul came out and asked, "what do you mean by electronic?"

For one camp of archivists, digital records were records which had been digitized. That is, they had started their lives off in the physical realm. Photograph collections, in particular, are coming to occupy this in-between space more and more. For these archivists, the term "electronic" referred specifically to records which had been born digital. My camp did not make this distinction, and hence the confusion.

But wait! There's more!

If we are specifically talking about audio-visual content, things become even murkier. In this context, digital refers to sound or images that are represented as numbers. Unfortunately, some people assume that all digital content is in files, and some even assume that digital means 'on the web'. Indeed, I have heard the verb "digitize" used to mean "making content suitable for use on the web" - that is, making web-quality proxies.

Under this meaning, millions of hours of audio-visual material would not be considered "digital". This is because those millions of hours of material sit on shelves on digital carriers, such as Digibeta, DV, Audio CD, DAT, and more.

So to clarify, when speaking/writing about digital records or digital objects or electronic materials I am referring to content which - at its most basic level - is represented by 0s or 1s. I don't care if it was born that way or not. I don't care if it's on a computer or on a minidisc. I love it all equally and I refuse to play favourites.

PREMIS for Digital Preservation

From the Library of Congree Digital Preservation Newsletter:

Behind every digital object, there is usually metadata with descriptive information about the object. But metadata for access and discovery is no longer enough. Now, digital library professionals are looking to the future with an eye towards preservation, not only needing to preserve the digital objects themselves but also the valuable metadata that goes along with it.

Enter PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies):

According to the publication Understanding PREMIS, preservation metadata "supports activities intended to ensure the long-term usability of a digital resource."

The motivation for PREMIS is based on the needs for implementing a digital preservation repository, which requires keeping important information about its digital objects to enable long-term management. As stated in Understanding PREMIS, "the primary uses of PREMIS are for repository design, repository evaluation and exchange of archived information packages among preservation repositories."

Note: I believe that the use and development of this preservation metadata standard should be a regular part of the digital library process.