It took two centuries for the Library of Congress to acquire its 29 million books and 105 million other items. Today, it only takes 15 minutes for the world to produce an equal amount of information in digital form, creating unprecedented archiving challenges for the Library of Congress. The Library is meeting the challenge of digital preservation by developing new tools to transfer large quantities of digital content. To date, more than 3 million files have been transferred and stored using the BagIt specification. Due to the Library’s digital preservation initiatives, more than 1,000 collections of digital content have been selected, captured, preserved, and made available to the U.S. public and online visitors across the globe.
We are warned to be careful about what we put online because data on the Internet lives forever. But keeping random copies of files on servers, routers and databases is not the same as preservation, said Martha Anderson, director of program management for the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Digital data can be ephemeral. “That is the paradox,” she said.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
