Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory

American Memory, launched in 1995, was the Library of Congress’s debut web presentation and the primary product of the National Digital Library Program. More than 700,000 described digital items in 90 collections were added to American Memory in those first five years, including content from 23 exte...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Liz Madden
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Edinburgh 2008-12-01
Series:International Journal of Digital Curation
Online Access:https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/63
_version_ 1797323862822617088
author Liz Madden
author_facet Liz Madden
author_sort Liz Madden
collection DOAJ
description American Memory, launched in 1995, was the Library of Congress’s debut web presentation and the primary product of the National Digital Library Program. More than 700,000 described digital items in 90 collections were added to American Memory in those first five years, including content from 23 external organizations. These materials were digitized, assembled and presented without tools designed specifically for the work and before the development of approved standards for the creation, presentation, or exchange of digital content. Valuable lessons about all levels of digital curation emerged from this early foray into digital library work, and many of the issues have persisted into current digital library efforts at the Library. This article focuses primarily on lessons learned about the conceptualization, creation, receipt, and preservation actions for digital content. It describes how strategies developed early on to manage the diverse and heterogeneous digital content helped inform later practices and were applied to legacy data in an effort to ensure their sustainability, flexibility and shareability into the future.
first_indexed 2024-03-08T05:34:14Z
format Article
id doaj.art-b401064995f74fbb9c919156091bb4ee
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 1746-8256
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-08T05:34:14Z
publishDate 2008-12-01
publisher University of Edinburgh
record_format Article
series International Journal of Digital Curation
spelling doaj.art-b401064995f74fbb9c919156091bb4ee2024-02-06T00:07:44ZengUniversity of EdinburghInternational Journal of Digital Curation1746-82562008-12-0132Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American MemoryLiz MaddenAmerican Memory, launched in 1995, was the Library of Congress’s debut web presentation and the primary product of the National Digital Library Program. More than 700,000 described digital items in 90 collections were added to American Memory in those first five years, including content from 23 external organizations. These materials were digitized, assembled and presented without tools designed specifically for the work and before the development of approved standards for the creation, presentation, or exchange of digital content. Valuable lessons about all levels of digital curation emerged from this early foray into digital library work, and many of the issues have persisted into current digital library efforts at the Library. This article focuses primarily on lessons learned about the conceptualization, creation, receipt, and preservation actions for digital content. It describes how strategies developed early on to manage the diverse and heterogeneous digital content helped inform later practices and were applied to legacy data in an effort to ensure their sustainability, flexibility and shareability into the future.https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/63
spellingShingle Liz Madden
Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
International Journal of Digital Curation
title Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
title_full Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
title_fullStr Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
title_full_unstemmed Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
title_short Applying the Digital Curation Lessons Learned from American Memory
title_sort applying the digital curation lessons learned from american memory
url https://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/63
work_keys_str_mv AT lizmadden applyingthedigitalcurationlessonslearnedfromamericanmemory