iPRES2024: Self-sovereign-digital preservation: The reviewers enjoyed your submission, but… what reviewers???
*Knocking gently on the door* “is anyone there, iPRES2024“? One thing I didn’t make clear in my previous iPRES2024 post…
Category: Archives (page 2)
Demystify-lite is upgraded and demystify 2.0.0 is finally here!
Demystify-lite and Demystify 2.0.0 have been released featuring the denylist for the first time, plus some bonus features! With thanks…
Moving to Leipzig and the year ahead
Late 2023 ended with a move to Leipzig. The move was driven by a switch back to full-time contracting in…
A rough guide to digital preservation metadata
A rough guide to metadata I published on Twitter once upon day and again in Content-disposition: Archival – Repatriating Dates…
What is the checksum of a directory? Introducing sumfolder1
In Fractal in detail: What information is in a file-format identification report? I describe the different ways of dissecting the information in a file-format identification report.
A file-format identification report is a data-rich artifact created during the processing of digital collections.
I had the idea of using this type of report to attach a checksum to an archival collection (files, and directories) as a whole. This is done using methods akin to a Merkle Tree, similar to those in source control systems such as Git, and Web3 Blockchain projects like Bitcoin.
This project is called sumfolder1.
Published: PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens
Not long after my first Code4Lib article I had another idea to run by the team there, and elected to see if my paper looking at events in the PREMIS metadata standard would be of interest to them and the readership.
My paper PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens was published April this year.
I take a look at the content of this paper below and plug a few gaps that I have been thinking about since its publication.
What information is in a file format identification report?
In early 2022, I was finally able to get around to writing a paper that I had been thinking about for the better part of a decade. The paper, “Fractal in Detail: What Information Is in a File Format Identification Report?” was published in the Code4Lib journal Issue 53.
The paper takes a deep dive into the fractal contents of file format identification reports exported from tools like Siegfried and DROID.
Let’s take a brief look the article and its contents below.
Information Maintainers talk: Something something twenty years open source…
It was back in May, yes, way back when, that Jordan Hale of the Information Maintainers group put the following to me:
I write today to ask if you’d be interested in being our special guest on the next Information Maintainers call … we thought your perspective on working within and maintaining decentralized, small-group systems and development infrastructures would be really rad to hear about. What do you think?
I am a big fan of the Information Maintainers and so I was pretty stoked to be asked. Of course, I jumped at the chance and wrote about “Something something twenty years open source…”
OPFCON: How has OPF contributed to the international digital preservation community? Where would this community be without OPF?
Last Wednesday and in another life, pre-COVID pandemic, I would have been visiting Vienna again. I visited for the digital preservation conference iPRES for the first time in 2010, and lived there for a short period of time last year.
Now, we’re in the midst of a pandemic and the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) 10th Anniversary Event could not happen in person but the OPF found a way anyway, and so 9-10 June 2020 became the online event OPFCON.
Fortunate enough have an abstract of mine be considered worthy of a panel towards the end of the event I was able to reflect on the last 10 years. My notes on those and the panel can be found below.
Digital preservation at the coalface: or how I learned that glamping doesn’t always involve the vast wilderness
The last Friday of March this year, I was invited by Elizabeth Kata at the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to give a presentation at the Vienna Institute for Historical Research (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung). I don’t have a transcript for that day or a complete set of notes that I followed, but here is the essence of the talk. In it, Reflecting on community and self-development in digital preservation; I touch upon, among other things, community, recognizing privilege, and finding value and meaning in digital records.
I began and ended the talk by singing two Waiata, an important part of my previous role at Archives New Zealand.
Te Manaaki taonga
Te Manaaki taonga
E whakarauika ana I te tini e
E ranga ana I te tira
Hei huruhuru moo te manu ka rere
Hei Poutuumaaro mo te kainga
Tuituinga koorero tuituinga tangata
Manaaki taaonga manaaki tangata
(Tane chant: Tuituinga koorero tuituinga tangata.
Manaaki taaonga manaki tangata – Hi!)
(Last time Wahine join chant: manaaki tangata – Hi!)
The value/prestige in protecting treasures
They gather/connect the people like the gathering of fish
They weave the party/masses
To be like feathers of a bird that takes flight
To be a strong pillar for our home
The sewing of stories, the sewing of people
The protection of treasures the protection of people