Author Archives: Isaiah Beard

About Isaiah Beard

Isaiah's role at Rutgers University Libraries is to establish standards and workflow practices for the digitization and encoding of a wide array of digital assets. His background in digital preservation begins with his avid interest in photography, and in the issues facing the field as it shifts from analog film formats into an increasingly digital landscape. He has researched and developed standards for the preservation of digital assets that have been adopted by a number of prominent agencies, including the Library of Congress, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and members of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). An advocate of free and open source software and standards, he volunteers time to projects assisting aspiring artists, photographers, videographers and musicians in using these open technologies to their advantage. Isaiah's current active projects in addition to NJVid include the Rutgers Community Repository (RUcore); and advising developers of the Ubuntu Linux project in matters relating to media format compatibility.

The last days of Kodachrome are at hand… but not film in general

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Isaiah Beard

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. Continue reading →

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A home for our digitization standards

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Isaiah Beard

Introducing a digitization standards home, detailing our recommended formats for digitizing various objects. Continue reading →

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New Anticircumvention Rulemaking: Major Shifts in the DMCA thanks to Library of Congress

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Isaiah Beard

The Library of Congress has made some pretty significant decisions in how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is applied, affecting how we copy DVDs, jailbreak iPhones, and even circumvent DRM on eBooks and computer software. Continue reading →

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Your tweets, saved for eternity

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Isaiah Beard

With over 12 billion 140-character messages and growing, Twitter has exploded onto the social networking scene since the first Tweet ever posted roughly fours ago.  Those tiny text-based messages add up: That’s an estimated 1.5 terabaytes of data, and growing! … Continue reading →

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The Economics of Digital Preservation, Analyzed and Digested

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Isaiah Beard

If there is one thing that every organization, institution, and individual curator learns as they delve into digitally preserving their collections, it’s that digital preservation isn’t cheap.  While there are very compelling reasons for digitizing, sometimes including it being cost-effective, there are still significant … Continue reading →

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