Explore the archive
If you ever come across an old floppy disk, be careful how you hold it and what you place against it. We’ve found a number of cases where putting a smartphone or tablet against a floppy disk will erase the data stored inside.
The Media Preservation Site at Indiana University – Bloomington (IUB) makes its message plain and clear the moment you first set your eyes on it: “Our History is At Risk.” Home to at least 3 million media objects, including sound and moving image recordings, photos, documents, and artifacts, IUB has come to grips with the issue at hand: a great deal of their heritage is locked within obsolete electronic and analog playback formats for sound and moving images. And they’re doing something about it.
The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in Japan may have far-reaching cultural and history-recording effects worldwide… possibly exacerbating a digital dark age.
One of biggest problems we’ve run into has been how people name files after they’ve created or digitized them. In this article, I’ll list some of the basic recommendations that ensure file processing on a digital library project will go smoothly. I’ll also point out some tips and tricks that have worked well for us in projects handled at the Digital Curation Research Center.
If you have any Kodachrome Film stashed away, the last days to get it developed are at hand. December 31, 2010 is the last day Dwayne’s Photo will process Kodachrome, shutting down the last commercial processing plant for the film.