Imagine spending months carefully scanning century-old manuscripts, uploading every image to your institution’s repository, and breathing a sigh of relief, the collection is “preserved.” Then, a few years later, a platform migration scrambles the order of hundreds of images, backup files go missing, and metadata built with care disappears into a new platform. That is Read More

“Preservation is documents and artifacts, recordings, digital media and all the tangible information that requires our professional advocacy and stewardship–the love and sweat of our labor. However, beyond all of that, most importantly, preservation is MEMORY and memory is the people and the communities who make them…” – Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty, Preservation Week Honorary Chair Since Read More

Working in Special Collections is a joy, but it is not without its terrors. The persistent challenge of preserving collections for long-term access requires vigilance, patience, and the courage to face entropy each and every day. This semester – just in time for Halloween – you can experience some of the chills that archivists face Read More

Get excited Cardinals, Preservation Week is April 27th to May 3rd this year! Preservation Week highlights preservation techniques and practices libraries and museums use for their respective collections. This year’s theme is Preserve the Past, Shape the Future: Inspiring the Next Generation. This celebration encourages the public to consider the importance of preservation and how they Read More

Have you ever searched for a Youtube video you saw a few years ago that was no longer there? Or try to open an old photo on your computer only to get an error message? This is a frustrating experience that we all have gone through when looking for older digital materials. Unfortunately, many of Read More

Have you ever searched for a Youtube video you saw a few years ago that was no longer there? Or try to open an old photo on your computer only to get an error message? This is a frustrating experience that we all have gone through when looking for older digital materials. Unfortunately, many of Read More

From April 28 – May 4,  Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures (a division of the American Library Association) is celebrating Preservation Week. Throughout the week, Core will be sponsoring several webinars exploring topics relevant to preservation policies and practices. The purpose of the week is to encourage the preservation of cultural artifacts and to highlight the vital Read More

All you need is a computer–heck, all you need is a smartphone to do historical research these days.  Three years ago, my colleague John Shepherd described our efforts in boutique digitization, which offered digital researchers several carefully selected sets of digital materials for use online.  Since then, we have undertaken many more large-scale digitization projects Read More