Lasting Links

Library of Congress – Digital Preservation

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) at the Library of Congress, a collaborative effort dedicated to ensuring that the digital information that conveys our history and heritage is available and accessible for generations to come.

Digital Preservation Program presentation

Presentation (PDF) highlighting the national digital preservation efforts at the Library of Congress.

A Network of Preservation Partners

The Library of Congress and its digital preservation partners from the federal, library, creative, publishing, technology, and copyright communities are working to develop a national strategy to collect, archive, and preserve digital content.

State Government Digtial Preservation

Video: Good Government Through Digital Infrastructure and Preservation
Paper: Options for Improving Access to Legislative Records (PDF, 135.41 Kb)
Paper: Digital Audio and Video White Paper (PDF, 769.20 Kb)
Paper: Retrospective Digitization Resources (PDF, 627.86 Kb)
Paper: Mashups Using Government Data (PDF, 327.34 Kb)
Video: “Preserving Digital Content in the 21st Century” from Principal Investigator Robert Horton
Preserving Legislative Records in the Digital Age Brochure (PDF, 1 Mb)
Paper: Comparison Chart of State Use of XML Bill Drafting Systems White Paper (PDF, 387 Kb)
Paper: Minnesota Legislative History Information White Paper (PDF, 293 Kb)
Presentation: Slides from Partner Kick-Off meeting in February 2008 (PDF, 34 Kb)
Video: “Preserving State Government Digital Information,” principal investigator Bob Horton’s presentation at the Library of Congress on April 24, 2008 (Real Media Webcast)

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Digital Media Group

The overall goal of DMG Projects is to develop the basic metrology and standards to improve the reliability, interoperability, and quality of digital media. Digital media technology covers a wide spectrum of areas; initially the DMG will focus on the following projects, which are based on the needs of industry and government and the expertise and resources available within the scope of IAD

National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST (Stability Comparison of Recordable Optical Discs)

The reliability and longevity of any storage medium is a key issue for archivists and preservationists as well as for the creators of important information. This is particularly true in the case of digital media such as DVD and CD where a sufficient number of errors may render the disc unreadable. This paper describes an initial stability study of commercially available recordable DVD and CD media using accelerated aging tests under conditions of increased temperature and humidity.

Library of Congress – Digital preservation

The mission of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is to develop a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available significant digital content, especially information that is created in digital form only, for current and future generations.

Library of Congress – Still Image formats

This discussion concerns a variety of media-independent still image formats—bitmapped and vector—and their implementations.

Library of Congress – Sound formats

This discussion concerns media-independent sound content in two format categories. The first category consists of formats that represent recorded sound, often called waveform sound. Such formats are employed for applications like popular music recordings, recorded books, and digital oral histories. The second category consists of formats that provide data to support dynamic construction of sound through combinations of software and hardware.

Library of Congress – Text formats

This discussion concerns individual works consisting primarily of text; it does not take into account any additional requirements for serial publications or supplementary non-text materials. The focus of the initial analysis is on quality and functionality factors that apply to text as a form of expression and hence to all genres of text.

Library of Congress – Moving image formats

This discussion concerns a variety of media-independent digital moving image formats and their implementations. Some formats, e.g., QuickTime and MPEG-4, allow for a very wide range of implementations compared to, say, MPEG-2, an encoding format whose possible implementations are relatively more constrained.