Google has announced an interesting new service, the inactive account manager. Google users can register with the service, and it will automatically send email to up to 10 addresses, after an account becomes totally inactive for a designed amount of time:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2013/04/plan-your-digital-afterlife-with.html
Looks like a great outreach tool for use with potential donors who are not quite ready to share their digital stuff with an archives. All you need to do is talk people into listing your archives email account as a contact!
Filename extensions can tell us much about electronic records and their use; we learn not only a file’s format, but also something about the environment in which it was created and the way it stores data. Knowing these pieces of information provide us with important metadata that enable us to begin assessing genres, providing an entryway into the appraisal as well as the arrangement and description of electronic content.
Many reasons exist, however, for why files may wend their way into repositories without file extensions. Considering divergent file-naming practices over time and changes in the ways software renders extensions, as well as the multitude of events that corrupt or irrevocably alter files during the course of their lives, it is no surprise that file extensions are either missing or a vestige of a file-naming convention that has long since been superseded. Without file extensions, the file has lost a portion of what the OAIS reference model calls its “representation information” (the data the computer needs to render the file by opening it in the proper piece of software). Being able to recover such information with a file identifying utility is vital to providing access to electronic content.
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I would like to Introduce Bethany Anderson, who will be posting from time to time on this blog. Bethany is my new colleague at the University of Illinois Archives, and she is working on a two-year project to arrange, describe, digitize and enhance access to records form our college of Engineering.
Bethany has a MLIS from the University of Texas at Austin, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management; she also holds and MA in Near Eastern Langauges and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. She most recently worked at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas.
As part of her initial training, I asked Bethany to process to the paper and electronic files of William Greenough, a former professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Psychology, and Psychiatry. As part of this, she discovered a very useful tool, which she’ll be reviewing in the next day or two.
Although I haven’t posted for quite some time, I’ve been very active with e-records issues lately. In particular, I would like to note that I developed a course for SAA’s Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) curriculum: Arranging and Describing Electronic Records. I have taught the course four times now; three times as a one day course and most recently as a two day course at the University of Texas Arlington. Each time I have taught the course, it has seen full registration, which has made for lively and informative discussions.
In one sense, the content of the course summarizes much of what I set out to learn and communicate during the the sabbatical project that gave rise to this blog.
As I mentioned previously, I selected Thematic as the parent theme under which I am am developing a new website for the University of Illinois Archives. Over the past several months, I set up the basic site structure, colors, fonts and layouts. I am preparing to dive into deeper customization, but before doing that, I would like to list some resources that I found helpful in learning about Thematic and in customizing the site. Then, I will describe some of the steps I took to actually customize the site. If you want to see the work to date, a screenshot is below the fold.
In a series of earlier posts, I noted that I am currently using WordPress to implement a new website for the University of Illinois Archives. Over the past several months, I have intermittently worked to choose a theme and begin customizing it. In addition, Angela Jordan has help me move content into the theme system.
At this point, I have a functional website in place, and by early August, we will be enabling the site. At the same time Jameatis Johnson, our new Archivist for Outreach and Engagement, will begin a round of iterative usability testing on the site. Before we begin that project, I would like to describe the rationale for the decisions taken to date, as well as to outline some of the basic work that has been completed to set up the site.
Firs, a bit of review: In my first post, I described the rationale for attempting to run an archives website as Content Mangement System powered by WordPress. My second post covered the basics of WordPress installation. After I had installed the site, I decided to blow it away, and to reinstall with WordPress enabled for a multisite installation; I covered this topic in my third post. Finally, I gave some background on the WordPress Hooks system, since understanding hooks is a necessity if you want to do serious customization work with WordPress.
Now it is time to discuss theme selection.
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Since at least the time of my graduate training in history, I have been interested in the question of how legal, regulatory, financial structures affect people, how they shape behavior, and how they can facilitate or impede prosperity. Partly for that reason, I wrote a dissertation concerning the activities and impact of mutual aid societies on the lives of English working men and women, prior to the foundation of the British welfare state.
Now that I am an archivist, I retain an interest in these topics, but with the twist that I also like to keep tabs on how records about financial history are generated, used, saved, uncovered, preserved, and used. I typically spend a portion of my lunch hour reading about economic topics. For the most part, these topics are documented via the ephemeral communication formats used in modern society: blog posts, PDF reports, tweets, instant messages and—especially—email messages. The news regarding our economic problems provides a strong rationale for society’s need to identify and preserve records that have permanent archival value.
As I mentioned several months ago, I had the pleasure to speak at the 17th Brazilian Congress on Archival Science. The Congress was great, and I hope to post more information about the speakers at a later time. For now, I would simply like to post the text of my remarks, which describe the rationale for a project I am currently beginning.
Since these remarks will be revised for publication, please see the important notices at the bottom. Also please note that no citations are included here; if you would like a copy of the paper with citation, please contact me.
Facilitating the Generation of Archives in the Facebook Era
Keynote Address: 17th Brazilian Congress on Archival Science
Rio de Janeiro, June 21, 2012
Last November, I boarded a train at Union Station in Chicago, Illinois. I had just a left a meeting of the Society of American Archivists’ Fundamental Change Working Group. This group was charged with revising the Fundamentals Series, which comprises the heart of our society’s publishing program. Everyone at the meeting was acutely aware of two facts: 1) that newly trained archivists need a sophisticated set of digital skills, and 2) that our new instructional manuals must facilitate these skills. Continue reading »
As I noted several years ago , many digital preservation efforts depend on the ability of archivists and curators to accurately identify and represent the contents of individual files. For example, tools such as DROID compare the contents of files the to PRONOM digital file registry. However, the PRONOM registry was supported by the UK National Archives, and competed with another registry, the GDFR, necessitating a merger and the development of a sustainable resource.
Today that service was announced, and it is a great day for practical approaches to electronic records because all kinds of useful tools and services can and will be developed from the UDFR knowledge base.
Carol Kussmann of the Minnesota Historical Society just sent me this wonderful review of checksum verification tools; most of the applications listed in her guest post not only calculates checksum values, but allows you to verify whether they have changed over time. Using a tool like this is really a foundational element of any digital archives program, and I think you’ll find Carol’s review, which I’ve posted below as a guest post, to be extremely useful. I know that I’ll be checking these tools out, with thanks going to Carol.
Author: Carol Kussmann, May 30, 2012
Checksums are one method available to assist with preservation of digital files. Calculating and re-calculating checksum values on files over time allows archivists to monitor the health of their digital files. Checksum values should remain the same over time, if they do not; the file has been modified or corrupted in some way on the bit level (the ones and zeros a computer uses to read a file).
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