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AV Archives Night and Tweetup
18 July 2014
Join us Wednesday, August 13th at the Black Cat for the officially unofficial SAA14 1st Annual AV Archives Night and concurrent Tweetup. AV Archives Night party is a screening/listening party sponsored and arranged by AVPreserve to highlight audiovisual collections in the DC area and the great work archivists do. We already have submissions from the University of Maryland, Archives of American Art, Veterans’ Oral History Project, and the National Archives, with more coming in. The programing will showcase early broadcast history, important oral history work, performing arts, unique historical footage of the region, and folklife music from across the globe. Highlights to pique your interest include footage of activities of US Army soldiers during the Baltimore Riot of 1968, color footage of Nurses of the 51st field hospital during WWII, and DJ patter from WMUC’s Yesternow from the 1970s. The event is free and open to anyone (do not need to be attending SAA) and will take place in the Backstage Concert Room at the Black Cat DC. Find location details at http://www.blackcatdc.com/shows/archives.html
Comparing NDSA Levels Rankings Across Cloud Storage Vendors
18 July 2014
Seth Anderson has been compiling a series of cloud storage vendor profiles over the past year with an analytical focus on the suitability of cloud storage as a preservation environment. As the amount of digitized and born digital material archives must manage grows, the pressure from administrators to find affordable solutions for file-based storage also increases. Seth’s profiles and continued work in assessing such services help give a framework for considering cloud storage while taking into account (and being able to communicate) the risks and benefits of various solutions.
Cost of Inaction Calculator Featured in IASA Journal
17 July 2014
AVPreserve President Chris Lacinak has published an article on our Cost of Inaction (COI) Calculator in the latest International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives Journal, “The Cost of Inaction: A New Model and Application for Quantifying the Financial and Intellectual Implications of Decisions Regarding Digitization of Physical Audiovisual Media Holdings”. We are at a crisis moment with physical audiovisual materials in which there is a severely limited window (and limited resources) to reformat and preserve historical collections. The COI Calculator is a free tool that helps organizations analyze the implications of varying levels of preservation action. COI adds a data point to ROI, or Return on Investment, and helps articulate what stands to be lost or gained in terms of access, intellect and finances based on different scenarios. This tool is not an argument to digitize everything, but rather to help decision makers make informed decisions that promote and enable progress and taking action. Chris’ article provides an overview through a sample case study of the why and how the COI Calculator can be used by an institution to plan and advocate.
The Things We Do — Catalyst Item Level Inventory
15 July 2014
I’m experimenting with a new series here, tentatively title The Things We Do. In part inspired by Kevin Driedger (got it right this time!) 5 Days of Preservation. In part inspired by the fact that my family hasn’t a clue of what I actually do with my life (besides rock).
New Cloud Storage Vendor Profile – DuraCloud
10 July 2014
AVPreserve has released the fifth in the series of Cloud Storage Vendor Profiles compiled by Consultant Seth Anderson. These profiles assess cloud storage services in relation to archival and preservation concerns, looking at issues of data management, reporting, redundancy, accessibility, security, end of service protocols, and adherence to the NDSA’s Levels of Preservation for digital collections.
Fixity Tutorial Now Available
9 July 2014
This week AVPreserve released version 0.4 of Fixity, our free file monitoring tool. Fixity allows users to schedule regular scans of folders or whole directories to check both file integrity against stored checksums and file attendance against filesystem locations (i.e., have files been added, moved, or gone missing). After a scheduled run a report is emailed to the user, detailing any discrepancies or changes that then allow the user to assess or resolve any potential issues.
Fixity And Filesystems: Enhanced System Monitoring Via Inodes
7 July 2014
The latest technical brief from Digital & Metadata Preservation Specialist Alex Duryee explores the use of inodes in the functionality of Fixity, our free digital preservation file monitoring tool. Fixity offers the unique capability of tracking file attendance as well as file integrity.
In this free download, learn how we used filesystem structure to achieve that and how tracking files through their inode makes for a more powerful, more flexible monitoring approach.
Fixity and Filesystems: Enhanced System Monitoring via inodes
7 July 2014
A PDF version of this article is available here.
If you have explored our checksum tool, Fixity, you may have noticed that it tracks a third value alongside the expected filepath and checksum value of files. This value is the file’s index location, which is crucial to the operation of the filesystem. On OSX and Linux, the index value is called the inode of a file; on Windows, it is the file identifier.
New Cloud Vendor Profile
24 June 2014
AVPreserve has released the fourth in the series of Cloud Storage Vendor Profiles compiled by Consultant Seth Anderson. These profiles assess cloud storage services in relation to archival and preservation concerns, looking at issues of data management, reporting, redundancy, accessibility, security, end of service protocols, and adherence to the NDSA’s Levels of Preservation for digital collections.
AVPreserve at International Seminar of Sound and Audiovisual Archives
23 June 2014
AVPreserve President Chris Lacinak has been invited to speak at the Sixth International Seminar of Sound and Audiovisual Archives in Mexico City, Mexico. Themed “The Democratization of Sound and Audiovisual Heritage in the Digital Age”, this year’s seminar is organized by the National Sound Recordings Library of Mexico as part of the Cooperation Program of the Latin American Summits: “Sound and Audiovisual IBERMEMORIA”, proposed by Mexico and the Latin American General Secretariat (SEGIB). The seminar promotes the conservation, use, and re-use of sound and audiovisual heritage in Latin America under the Cooperation Program’s efforts to establish a model for the integral conservation of sound, audiovisual, and filmic documents that make up the heritage of the countries of the region.
