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.
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…”
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.
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
Back in October a good friend of mine at the Australian Society of Archivists Victoria Branch asked me to write a short piece describing ‘My GLAM’. I adopted the theme, “Sitting at the Coalface”.
GLAM stands for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. In the article I described where my focus in the digital preservation world has been for the last decade. I also suggested that one letter was missing from GLAM: ‘P’ for ‘people’.
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 is massively multi-disciplinary and it can take time to be able to grasp the skills and concepts cross-discipline, wherever you began your own training.
How do we develop the skills of new folk entering the field today?
How do we re-skill those who have worked in GLAM a long time in disciplines other than digital preservation?
These are questions I think about a lot. I dig into some of those thoughts below and take a look at one approach I worked on for students and very early-career professionals with flashcards using Brainscape.
