By: St John Karp At the BitCurator Forum this year I presented a talk called “The Interconnectedness of All Things.” I discussed the potential use for a new tool in the digital archivist’s toolkit, something that would help archivists discover, navigate, and describe digital collections. I’d like to talk a little more about how a tool like this could work and why I think it’s important. Traditional archival description imposes a hierarchical structure on records. Hierarchies, however, can fail to reflect the messy nature of real life. It can be impossible for a hierarchy to capture relationshi ..read more

By: Doreen Dixon History, as it is commonly understood, is a constructed narrative of the past,1 and within the vast corridors of history, archives stand as guardians of society’s collective memory. Charged with the crucial task of preserving records, they serve as repositories of our past, holding the narratives that shape our understanding of the world. However, the narratives they preserve have not always been inclusive. Historically, archives have often overlooked and inadequately represented the stories of historically marginalized communities, integral to understanding the complete tapes ..read more

Do you have any DEI-related archival projects that you are working on this year? What are you working on now? What projects are you thinking about working on? The bloggERS editorial team is interested in posts that discuss DEI-related projects and projects that are still in the planning phase. We want to hear about them all! Writing for bloggERS!: We encourage visual representations! Posts can include or largely consist of comics, flowcharts, a series of memes, etc. Written content should be roughly 600-800 words in length. Write posts for a wide audience: anyone who stewards, studies, or has ..read more

Happy new year from the editorial team at BloggERS! The past year was full of digital preservation developments, so as we leave 2023 behind, we’ve compiled a list of new resources to take forward into 2024. Of course, this list isn’t comprehensive, but we hope it will nevertheless come in handy for our dear BloggERS! readers. For a throwback, you can also look at last year’s write-up. In addition to the list below, we’d love to hear what other new resources our readers are excited about! Feel free to respond in the comments and share widely with fellow electronic records practitioners. Tools A ..read more

By: Doreen Dixon and Kari May The NDSA 2023 Digital Preservation Conference (DigiPres) in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 14-16 focused on the theme “Communities Through Time and Space.” The conference had 187 attendees, including 66 presenters, and 10 international participants from Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Canada, and Japan. The event provided a venue for experienced and new professionals to gather, network, and discuss advancing digital stewardship. The DigiPres Opening Plenary delivered essential updates on organizational changes, aiding members in planning fu ..read more

by Abby Beazer This year, the DLF Forum and DigiPres 2023 were held in St Louis, Missouri. Seeing as this was only my second time attending the DLF Forum in person, and my first time attending DigiPres, the conference week was full of opportunities to learn from my colleagues. Although the DLF Forum didn’t have a formal theme this year, I did notice some trends throughout the conference schedule and the sessions that I attended. Concerns around diversity, equity, and inclusion continued to be a common thread, in addition to digital asset management system migrations (both in-progress and compl ..read more

By: Sara Palmer Metadata extraction from print bibliographies is a process that often gets underplayed in discussions about big data and AI. However, the fact remains that for researchers, archivists, and bibliophiles, it’s an essential task that traditionally requires countless hours of manual labor. Advancements in AI and natural language processing have made this large task more feasible and efficient. Here’s a case study on how the ChatGPT API revolutionized the extraction process for a large print bibliography project. Breaking Down the Bibliography The Wayfinder project at Emory Universi ..read more

With just a few weeks to go before the Digital Library Federation 2023 Forum (November 13-15) kicks off in St. Louis, bloggERS! is seeking attendees who are interested in writing a re-cap or a blog post covering a particular session, theme, or topic relevant to SAA Electronic Records Section members. The program for the forum is available if you want inspiration. Please let us know if you are interested in contributing by sending an email to ers.mailer.blog@gmail.com! You can also let us know if you’re interested in writing a general re-cap or if you’d like to cover something more specific. Wr ..read more

The 92nd Street Y is home to the Unterberg Poetry Center, a revered venue for writers to share their work with the public. Like many cultural organizations, 92NY is an unintentional repository of social memory, and the email collections of the Poetry Center’s directors, documenting exchanges with illustrious writers alongside day-to-day operations, is no exception. The Poetry Center adopted email in the late 1990s, and it has been the primary tool of communication for at least the last 15 years. In September of 2022, The Poetry Center and the digital archives team at Stanford University Librar ..read more

Welcome to the newest series on bloggERS, Tales from ChatGPT. In the coming months, bloggERS will feature posts from digital archives professionals that will explore the question: How have you used ChatGPT or other AI models to help solve a problem or complete a task in your archival workflow? Have something you’d like to contribute? Send us an email! Transkribus: A Practical Tool for Achieving Our Digital Archive Dreams by Aaron O’Donovan Creating accurate transcriptions of historical materials has been an issue for libraries and archives since humans have been recording thoughts, ideas, and ..read more