Storing inactive records in an off-site facility can save space and costs, but these records, like active ones stored in your office, still need to be managed according to a retention schedule and destroyed appropriately. If such actions are not …
Preventing Data Loss: Steps Toward Long-Term Digital Preservation
Will you be able to access your important digital documents twenty years from now? Data from NASA’s Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s was nearly lost to history. It was stored on magnetic tape that began to dry out …
Taking Timelines Beyond Two Dimensions
Museum exhibits have long used timelines to communicate events and trends. Sprawling across museum walls, these time-tested graphics pack in details and provide context to a general audience. However, history is not two dimensional. As demand for online history increases, …
Recommended Resources for Assessing and Selecting Collections Management Software (CMS)
Evaluating and selecting the right collections management software for your organization is a critical first step in the process and one that should not be taken lightly. As collections management consultants, we frequently collaborate with clients and software developers to …
Assessing Senator Byrd’s Digital Files – Early Results
Arranging and preserving digital materials has been an ongoing challenge for repositories that hold the collections of U.S. senators and representatives. Our digital archives team recently joined forces with the Byrd Center for Legislative Studies (Byrd CLS) to conduct a …
WWII and Korean War Industrial Mobilization: History Programs and Related Records
This is a modified version of a presentation I did for the 2014 Society for History in the Federal Government conference in April. This version focuses on the legal usefulness, in environmental cases, of the official agency histories and records …
Long-term Digital Storage: Simple Steps to Get Started
Preserving digital files for long-term access is a difficult issue for many organizations; the files can quickly become inaccessible due to media and hardware obsolescence and they are subject to degradation. With the sheer volume of digital information produced on …
Notes from the Field: The Art of Crafting a FOIA Request
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is yet more proof of the adage “no good deed goes unpunished.” Though intended to facilitate greater transparency in government, as those who have submitted a FOIA request can attest, the process can be …
The Power of Artifacts to Elevate the Story
The word “artifact” may conjure up a mental image of something archaic — a dusty old object that is stored away and no longer relevant. But when revealed through the right lens, artifacts become powerful tools for bringing a story …
Time and Space: Interpreting History through GIS Mapping
GIS mapping is a powerful way to make history come to life. Combining geographic information system (GIS) data with historical information, may serve to: Present historical evidence in its precise geographical context, Visually convey geographic changes over time, or Tell …
Privacy: The Archivist’s Dilemma
Owners and custodians of archives collections often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: the collections exist for researchers to use, yet they may contain information that should remain private. How then, does an archivist resolve this conflict so …
Is Google Making You Fat? Tips for Conducting “Lean and Mean” Online Historical Research
The amount of online content continues to grow exponentially, making the Internet an indispensable tool in historical research. Clay Johnson, online database expert and author of the cleverly written book The Information Diet, contends that with so much readily available …