This blog is reposted from one that originally appeared at http://drewvandecreek.blogspot.com/ on July 31, 2015. This is funny. In the course of preparing an article with my colleague Jaime Schumacher I came across Ross Harvey’s “So Where’s the Black Hole in our Collective Memory?: A Provocative Position Paper” (January, 2008), which suggests that the digital preservation community has …
Category: expectations
May 02 2014
What can we reasonably accomplish?
In a previous post about acquiring digital content, Stacey mentioned that we often “take it all in, the good shepherds that we are. We build systems and websites that can do nifty things.” Stacey’s post was a cautionary tale, and others have expressed these concerns, too. Now I’ll add my voice to it. I’m a …
Dec 30 2013
An e-records’ transfer tale
In mid-December I received my first-ever completely electronic records transfer from a student organization. The group’s faculty advisor attended two of my campus presentations this year and followed up with a request for a one-on-one meeting to talk about their specific kinds of records. Before the end of the semester a student leader of the …
Sep 12 2013
Testing A Piece of Digital Preservation Management Software: Day One Thoughts
As our intrepid readers know, we are now entering the testing phase of our project. Want to see where we are? Check out the wiki. So, I attempted to test my first piece of software today. Keep in mind that this is end-user style testing, where my goal was to launch the installed software on …
Aug 08 2013
Reflections from Digital Directions 2013 Conference
From July 21st to the 23rd I had the opportunity to attend the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) sponsored Digital Directions; Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections conference on the campus of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Along with the friendly people, good eats, and plenty of bookstores, I was able to network …
May 13 2013
A little soul-baring
In our regular conference call this month I was venting, yet again, about all the trouble I have with people not being critical about 1) what digital content they create, and 2) how we can possibly save it all. These obstacles seem insurmountable. My colleagues challenged me to write about this frustration so here goes. …
May 02 2013
What Are Your Digital Preservation Roadblocks?
Working on large initiatives like digital preservation often feels like being in a car on a bumpy road under construction. There are lots of stops and starts. It’s “hurry up and wait.” One of the things we’ve come across here on the Digital POWRR project that we weren’t expecting are some technical roadblocks. Specifically, that …
Apr 03 2013
Do it anyway.
I’ve been thinking about this song lately. Not just because I’m a fan of the Muppets and enjoy Ben Folds (although both of these things are absolutely true). But because keeping up with digital preservation, all of the tech, all of the news, all of the projects is hard. I just want to acknowledge …
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