Ignite
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.
AVPreserve Sponsoring AV Archives Night Party
12 June 2014
AV Archives Night || Ensuring Access @ SAA 2014
Episode 10 of More Podcast, Less Process Now Available
9 June 2014
Episode #10 of “More Podcast, Less Process”, the archives podcast co-produced by METRO and AVPreserve, is now available for streaming and download. This episode is “Archival Manoeuvres: Managing Digitization Projects” with guests Miwa Yokoyama (Digital Project Manager, Carnegie Hall) and Mitch Brodsky (Digital Archives Manager, New York Philharmonic). Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonic are both in the midst of large scale digitization projects involving their historic institutional collections, primed towards increasing researcher access to the materials and making the content more broadly usable by the entire organization. Miwa and Mitch talk about the differences and similarities between their respective projects (in-house v. outsourcing, scope of collections, access points), and provide a helpful breakdown of the challenges, successes, and pro-tips they have encountered. Josh and Jefferson had a lively discussion with our guests, and tried to keep the westside/eastside trash-talking to a minimum.
MDQC 0.2 Released
2 June 2014
Version 0.2 of MDQC has been released for free download. MDQC is a desktop application that reads the embedded metadata of a file or a directory and compares it against a set of rules defined by the user, verifying that the technical and administrative specs of the files are correct. This automates and minimizes the time needed to QC large batches of digitized assets, increasing the efficiency of managing digitization projects. Updates to Version 2.0:
Mapping Standards For Richer Assessments: NDSA Levels Of Digital Preservation And ISO 16363:2012
1 June 2014
The basis of Bertram Lyons’ panel presentation at Digital Preservation 2014. To date, the difficulty and high bar of doing an internal assessment as a Trusted Digital Repository have created a hurdle to the ability of organizations to track or rank their progress towards digital preservation standards. AVP has been working on means of adapting TDR risk assessment by improving reporting options and analyses. Two assessment tools currently in use for digital preservation risk assessment are the NDSA’s Levels of Digital Preservation Matrix (Version 1) and ISO 16363:2012 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories.
The two tools offer overlapping yet distinct methods of analysis, very useful but resulting in differing reporting classifications and outcomes that are not easy to reconcile. In order to encourage the use of the two tools under one roof, and, especially, to increase the outputs of a standard ISO 16363 assessment, AVP staff have mapped the Levels of Digital Preservation categories to the ISO 16363 requirements. A full paper on the topic will be available here soon.
Linked below is our work that documents the mapping of NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation categories to ISO 16363 criteria and the DigPres14 slidedeck. We offer these as an opportunity for community discourse and involvement. Please evaluate our mappings and let us know what you think to help us work towards a shared mapping that others can employ in a standardized way.
- ISO REQUIREMENT MAPPED TO NDSA CATEGORIES (XLSX)
- MAPPING STANDARDS FOR RICHER ASSESSMENT DIGPRES14 SLIDEDECK (PDF)
AVPreserve at AIC 2014
29 May 2014
AVPreserve Senior Consultant Kara Van Malssen will be presenting at the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) 42nd Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA this week. The theme of this year’s meeting is Conscientious Conservation – Sustainable Choices in Collection Care. Kara will be on a panel at the Electronic Media Group Luncheon on Friday with Jim Coddington (Chief Conservator, Museum of Modern Art), Ben Fino-Radin (Digital Repository Manager, Museum of Modern Art), and Dan Gillean (AtoM Product Manager, Artefactual Systems) to discuss MoMA’s effort to design and build the first digital repository for museum collections (DRMC). This has been a long-gestating and much-needed tool to help ensure the long-term viability and sustainability of MoMA’s time-based and file-based artworks, and its development has involved a lot of critical, innovative thinking and collaboration across many of the departments at the Museum. Kara and AVPreserve have provided consultative support in various aspects of development for much of the length of the project. We’ve been excited and honored to be a part of it and to participate in the AIC panel. We’ve always enjoyed AIC for the great community and the fascinating, educational projects and topics that are discussed. Say hi to Kara if you’re attending.
Seeking Diversity and a Unified Field
13 May 2014
When I was an undergrad there was a certain lament felt by various factions of the English department over the belief that teaching was becoming more difficult because there was less and less (perceived) cultural common ground among students and between faculty and students. In the past, they felt, it could be assumed that most students were coming in with at a least a basic knowledge of things such as the christian Bible, American history, maybe some classical Greek and Roman literature, and other canonical or popular works. With this presumed commonality, texts that may allude to such works could be easily dived into and discussed. Some felt, however, that it was becoming the case more and more that this was not true anymore. Whether due to the vast expansion of the number of works available and what was considered popular or worthy of study, or a shift to a more diverse cultural background in the student body, or the constant fluctuation of authors falling in and out of favor in the academy, or changing high school curricula, certain professors were finding that they first had to start classes by laying a groundwork of understanding that was not necessary before. They had to actually teach the Bible before they could teach the Bible as it pertained to or was the source of other works or historic moments.
Episode 9 of More Podcast Less Process Now Available
6 May 2014
Episode #9 of “More Podcast, Less Process”, the archives podcast co-produced by METRO and AVPreserve, is now available for streaming and download. This week’s episode is “All Archives Are Local: Talking with the National Archives & Records Administration” with guests Bonnie Marie Sauer (Archivist, National Archives at New York City) and Kevin De Vorsey (Supervisory Electronic Records Format Specialist, National Archives and Records Administration) discussing the work that NARA does to manage billions of records, develop collecting policies for an ever changing set of formats, and provide access and research assistance to the public. The scope and scale of what NARA is responsible for is not widely understood, and it was a fascinating, revealing conversation even though Josh and Jefferson just seemed to scrape the surface of this organization that is a critical to our understanding of local and national history, as well as being one of the main conduits for how we the people can interact with our government.
