Fundamentals of Preservation

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) has announced the launch of Fundamentals of Preservation (FOP), a four-week, Web-based course in basic preservation principles, policies, and practices. It will cover the role of preservation in the institutional setting, preventive care, history and manufacture of library materials, preservation options, standard methods for care, repair and reformatting, and digital preservation.

The course consists of self-paced modules within the announced start and end dates and eight hours of contact time. Students will use a forum and chat room to interact with other students and the instructors, Karen Brown (University at Albany-SUNY) and Jake Nadal (UCLA).

The next session of FOP will be held August 23 to September 17, 2010. It will cost $109 for ALCTS members and $129 for nonmembers. To register, go to www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webcourse/fpres/index.cfm. For more information, contact Julie Reese, ALCTS events manager at (800) 545-2433, ext. 5034 or E-mail: .

New Library of Congress video

The Library of Congress has released “Why Digital Preservation is Important for Everyone,” a new video to explain the fragility of digital objects to a general audience. It runs 3 minutes and 10 seconds and covers the importance of digital information, its dependence on software and hardware to remain accessible, the dangers of technological obsolescence, and the necessity for active management of digital repositories. Given the scale of the digital preservation problem, the Library of Congress is working with numerous international partners on solutions.

The video is available free-of-charge at www.digitalpreservation.gov/videos/digipres/index.html.

iPres 2009

The California Digital Library has mounted abstracts, videos, slide shows, and full texts of the presentations made at iPres 2009: the Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects held in October 2009. There are 31 presentations available online, including “Are You Ready? Assessing Whether Organizations are Prepared for Digital Preservation,” “E-infrastructure and Digital Preservation: Challenges and Outlook,” “Towards a Methodology for Software Preservation,” “Digital Materiality: Preserving Access to Computers as Complete Environments,” “Tools for Preservation and Use of Complex and Diverse Digital Resources,” “Distributed Digital Preservation: Technical, Sustainability, and Organizational Developments,” “Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories,” “Predicting Long Term Preservation Costs,” and “Cost Model for Digital Preservation: Cost of Digital Migration,”

The presentations and supporting materials are available free-of-charge at www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/iPres/confsched.html.

Codecs decoded

Chris Lacinak (AudioVisual Preservation Solutions) has published A Primer on Codecs for Moving Image and Sound Archives: 10 Recommendations for Codec Selection and Management. The 13-page paper explains what a codec is, how it is used, and the meaning of those uses for libraries and archives. The word codec is derived from encoding/decoding and compression/decompression. Codecs are important because almost all digital moving image and sound content requires one for decoding, and the wrong choice of codec can jeopardize preservation of that content.

The primer is available free-of-charge at www.avpreserve.com/papers-and-presentations/a-primer-on-codecs-for-moving-image-and-sound-archives/.