Digital Preservation Archives - Page 4 of 6 - ross spencer :: exponentialdecay.digipres

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)…

My GLAM: Sitting at the Coalface

Back in October a good friend of mine at the Australian Society of Archivists Victoria Branch asked me to write…

Digital Preservation as a Thought Experiment

Back in 2017, I had an abstract accepted for a chapter in the ALCTS Monograph: Digital Preservation in Libraries: Preparing for a Sustainable Future. With my author’s copy now available, I take a look at the background and its genesis below. The complete monograph is a fascinating read with some great contributors. You can find it online at the ALA Store.

Digital Preservation Risk analysis, Uncertainty, and Digital File Format Obsolescence (European Conference on Digital Archives (2010))

Full paper: The application of risk models to digital file format obsolescence I have seen a lot of conversation about…

My first weeks at Artefactual Systems Inc.

There was a great response to my move away from the public sector into a private sector company (that’s right,…

Category: Digital Preservation (page 4)

What is the checksum of a directory? Introducing sumfolder1

Published: PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens

What information is in a file format identification report?

Information Maintainers talk: Something something twenty years open source…

OPFCON: How has OPF contributed to the international digital preservation community? Where would this community be without OPF?

Digital preservation at the coalface: or how I learned that glamping doesn’t always involve the vast wilderness

My GLAM: Sitting at the Coalface

Digital Preservation as a Thought Experiment

Digital Preservation Risk analysis, Uncertainty, and Digital File Format Obsolescence (European Conference on Digital Archives (2010))

My first weeks at Artefactual Systems Inc.

Follow ross spencer :: exponentialdecay.digipres :: blog