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.
The Cost Of Inaction: A New Model And Application
17 July 2014
Physical audiovisual media collections are at risk for extreme levels of loss if action is not taken to preserve them in the next 10-15 years. Most archives are well aware of this critical issue, but are unable to move forward with preservation projects because it is difficult to quantify the intellectual impact and cost impact of action or inaction in order to advocate and secure budgets.
Our new Cost of Inaction Calculator provides graphics and metrics that compare resource expenditures, digitization and storage costs, and the rate of loss of physical media to help provide an approach to planning and advocating for preservation. This paper presents a sample case study showing how the COI model and Calculator can be used to support preservation efforts. This is a PDF version of an article that originally appeared in the International Association of Sound & Audiovisual Archives Journal No. 43, July 2014.
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 0.4 With OSX Support Released
8 July 2014
AVPreserve is excited to announce the release of Fixity version 0.4, our free file monitoring application. This release is exciting because after months of development and testing we can now offer support for 64-bit Mac OSX systems, greatly increasing the usability of this tool. The Mac and PC versions of Fixity and supporting documentation can be downloaded on our Tools page. In addition to the new Mac version, Fixity 0.4 also offers updates for:
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.
