Hi Readers!

Yesterday we held our day-long Symposium on digital preservation, {Let’s Get Digital}, co-sponsored by the Archivists Round Table of New York, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and of course IMLS. It was so amazing to see such a great turnout from our #digipres community!

If you were there, please take a few moments to complete our Feedback Survey.
Also, to everyone, please check out our Git Hub Repository, which contains all of our speakers’ slide-decks and instructional materials.

Here are the highlights, in case you missed it…

Vicky Steeves kicked off the day with some inspiring opening remarks about NDSR and the state of digital preservation. We’re here to change the world!

 

 

 

 

Carmel & I (Genevieve Havemeyer-King) then began the program with our talk, “From Planning to Preservation: Method & Madness”. Carmel walked us through the process of developing a basic retention schedule, based on her work at the BAM Hamm Archives, with some helpful tips and insights on how to make it a friendly, productive, experience. I picked up where she left off to describe how one moved from selection and appraisal of materials to choosing the components of a digital preservation system. Also, our entire talk was enhanced by Clueless gifs. ; )

Dr. Rachel Mattson, Manager of Special Projects, and Poorna Swami, Development Associate, from La Mama Experimental Theater Club, hosted an amazing Grant Workshop, in which they gave practical insider advice on how to write an effective grant. Sharing their entire process, from research and “stalking” (as Poorna calls it) to asking for feedback, this talk really got down to the nuts and bolts of fundraising.

 

After lunch, we were treated with Mary’s overview of her work at New York Public radio, with a demonstration of how to use open source software,  NetMDPython, to get around firewalls to migrate data from Mini Discs in “Get out of My (Mini) Disc, Get Into My Drive”. Here’s a link to the instructions on using NetMDPython scripts.

 

Kathryn Gronsbell, Digital Asset Manager at Carnegie hall, gave an introduction to the file packaging format BagIt and lead us through a simple workshop using the Python build to create, validate, and mess with some sample Bags via Mac OS command line, and I talked about my experience pondering how BagIt fits into workflows that require creation of really big archival information packages, such as those we’re creating at WCS. Kathryn’s wonderful instructional package, with a list of helpful references and tutorials on BagIt, can be found Here on our github.

Morgan began a panel on “Web Archiving for Everyone” with a demo on the new tool, Webrecorder.io, followed by some informative presentations on web archiving initiatives given by Sumitra Duncan, Web Archiving coordinator for the Frick Art Reference Library, Rebecca Gunther, Consultant for the NYARC pilot project, and Alexandra Drakakis, Associate Curator for the National September 11th Memorial & Museum.

 

 

 

Dinah closed out the day with a detailed overview of how to use microservices for audiovisual preservation. After demonstrating a script she created and sharing her experiences with learning how to code (you can too!), she emphasized the importance of being open to new tools and making considerations about retrieval costs, collection growth, and environmental impact when making decisions about how to manage and store your digital objects.

 

 

We were so glad to have an opportunity to share our experiences with all of you, and to learn from the insightful questions that were sparked throughout the day. A main goal of this event was to provide an open, inclusive space for discussion about the issues we’ve been grappling with, and we could not have done it without you!

We didn’t get to meet all of you, or even talk to most of you, but we are so grateful that you were there, and we continue to value your advice, opinions, and stories.

Thank You for helping us create a wonderful day.