An ebook on digital preservation for home users, organizations, and administrators. Information on backup, archiving, format choice, organization, and more!
May 16, 2013
news books, digital preservation, errata Leave a comment
I’ve launched a page of updates and errata for Files that Last, with some new information on the WebP still image format. As I learn about things that have changed or mistakes in the book, I’ll add to the page.
If you spot anything that you think needs fixing, please let me know.
May 2, 2013
sticky post books, digital preservation Comments Off
Files that Last is the first e-book on digital preservation directed at “everygeek.” In case your layout doesn’t show you the page links (e.g., on a mobile device), you can read what the book’s about and how to get it here.
April 29, 2013
advocacy books, digital preservation, publicity Comments Off
Looking for a way to get the word out about digital preservation? I’ve added a new page on reviewing FTL to this site. All publicity (well, nearly all) is good!
April 24, 2013
news books, digital preservation, libraries Comments Off
Libraries can buy Files that Last through Axis360 and Cloud Library, or will be able to at some point in the future. Since libraries are clearly key customers, both as users and as lenders, I’ve made the book available to them at a permanent discount, for $6.99. In addition to those aggregators, buyers can buy through Smashwords’ Library Direct.
Librarians, please let me know if you have good or bad experiences buying the book this way, or if you’ve had past experience with these channels.
April 18, 2013
news books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
Yes, it’s finally here! You can now buy Files that Last on Smashwords for just $7.99.
In fact, you can buy it for less than that — “for a limited time only,” as they say in the commercials. Enter this coupon code:
TL36C
and you’ll get 20% off. But it’s good only till April 20. I can’t figure out whether than means at the beginning or the end of the day or in what time zone, so use the coupon before the 20th to be safe.
You need a Smashwords account to buy the book. It’s free, and I’ve never been spammed. In time Smashwords will make the book available through other outlets; I’ll post here as I learn about them.
I’m thrilled that the book is finally done and available, but now comes the hard work of selling it. Please mention or review it where interested people will see it. There will be ads (I’ve set up a Google Ad Words account), but the real key to the success of the book will be people who read it and spread the word.
Thanks once again to Matt Leger for the cover and Terri Wells for the proofreading, and to all my Kickstarter backers. Special thanks to Jay Gattuso, who backed the project at the Sponsor level. If you’re one of those backers at the $10 level or higher, you should have gotten a coupon code to download the book for free. If you haven’t received it, get in touch with me and I’ll see what I can do,.
April 10, 2013
news books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
I’m going through the proofread copy and making final corrections. You don’t want to know how many embarrassing typos Terri Wells has saved me from. After that, it’s a matter of getting it up on Smashwords and satisfying all their formatting requirements, and on April 18 it will be available for purchase! Everyone who pledged on Kickstarter at the $10 level or higher will get a code to download it for free.
If you’re involved in a Preservation Week event, please think about a way to include a mention of Files that Last.
I’m thrilled, if slightly exhausted, to be bringing this project to a successful conclusion. Thank you all once again for your support!
April 8, 2013
news books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
I’ve got Terri Wells’ edits back in the mail, so now I have to make a final run through the book. After making all the corrections, there will still be work to get it up on Smashwords. My experience with JHOVE Tips for Developers, which I did mostly as a practice run, shows that it will take several revision cycles to get the book’s style to satisfy all of Smashwords’ criteria. (JHOVE Tips still doesn’t qualify for the premium catalog.) Smashwords doesn’t have any provision for submitting a book as a private draft, so please don’t buy it till I say here that it’s ready.
The amount of support that I’ve gotten on this project has been fantastic. I hope you’ll be as happy with the result as I am.
April 1, 2013
news books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
I’ve had to change proofreaders at a late date, but I think the new proofreader will do very well. I’m still committed to getting the book out in April.
I’d changed the default page of filesthatlast.com to point at the “About” page. Unfortunately, this left no way to get to the posts page, and every solution to this that I’ve seen requires writing PHP, which isn’t allowed on WordPress-hosted blogs. I really want to attract more attention to the “About” page, which is the one that actually promotes the book, but for the moment I’ve just changed the default page back.
March 15, 2013
promotion books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
The Signal is a very good blog on digital preservation. It has a serious limitation, though: it’s published by the Library of Congress, which as a government agency has to stay neutral on businesses and products. I heard at the recent OPF Hackathon that people who write for it have been required to take out comments endorsing or criticizing specific products.
I don’t have that limitation. In Files that Last, I name names and make recommendations. Here are some things in FTL that you’ll never find on The Signal:
If you want to see more statements on digital preservation with no punches pulled, you’ll be able to in April when the book comes out.
March 7, 2013
news, Uncategorized books, digital preservation, status Comments Off
Files that Last goes to the proofreader tomorrow, but just today I came across a story that I wanted to add to it. Rather than mess with the existing text, I’m entering it as an appendix. Here it is, as it currently stands.
Tryniski started by digitizing old postcards for neighbors in Fulton, New York. Then he spent a year digitizing the entire run of the Oswego Valley News by hand on a flatbed scanner. In 2003 he got a microfilm scanner at a fire sale and started getting microfilms of newspapers from libraries and historical societies in exchange for the digitized copies. He’s paying its own expenses, apparently less than $1000 a month. The setup sounds very fragile; he has a “server that’s located in a gazebo on his front deck,” and the article doesn’t say a word about offsite backup for his growing farm of computers and drives. If anything bad happens to him or his house, the whole archive might vanish.
What one person does, though, someone else can do better. It would take more money, but not a lot more, to set up a better server environment and a secondary backup, and it would just take a little taste and programming skill to set up a better-looking site.
The article raises the question of how much supporting metadata is needed:
Asked for the rationale behind this byzantine system, a spokesperson for the NEH denied that breaking up the funding into small grants drives up costs, adding that the goal is partially to teach small libraries how to digitize newspapers in accordance with the Library of Congress’ “high technical” standards. That way they’ll be able to take that know-how and apply it to other projects.
But [Brian] Hansen [the general manager of Newspapers.com] says the Library of Congress’ detailed specifications for analyzing each newspaper page are of questionable value to users and a major reason his firm has to charge so much.
“Why not use the money for a lighter index to get more pages online? It would be interesting to sit down with the Library of Congress and the NEH and have a conversation about what’s the best thing we can do for consumers,” says Hansen.
Even so, less than one-third of the funding goes to the actual scanning and indexing by firms like iArchives. The NEH says the remaining money—more than $2 per newspaper page— goes for “identification and selection of the files to be digitized, metadata creation, cataloguing, reviewing files for quality control, and scholarship on the scope, content and significance on each digitized newspaper title, and in some cases specialized language expertise.”
Certainly there’s value in all that information, but it adds cost. The approach which the Library of Congress takes isn’t necessarily the approach that you should take as a Level 1 archivist with a server in a gazebo. Having a little information on a lot of newspaper pages is better in some ways than having a lot of information on relatively few pages.
There are high and low roads, and the efforts of eager amateurs can make a significant contribution to the retention of information. Preservation geeks, go forth and archive!
Unplugging a running computer doesn't help. Not even in an emergency. Especially not in an emergency.
