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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Safeguarding the Past: Planning a Company Archives
Developing an archival program can be a daunting task—especially when the concept of “archives” is often equated with “storing old files.” However, in an era of information overload and employee turnover, companies can have a distinct competitive advantage if they …