july11b.indd


July/August 2011  431 C&RL News

Jane Hedberg is senior preservation program officer 
at Harvard University Library, e-mail: jane_hedberg@
harvard.edu; fax: (617) 496-8344

NARA reformatting
The Special Media Preservation Division of 
the National Archives and Records Admin-
istration (NARA) has opened its products 
and services Web portal to the public. Ac-
cording to its mission statement, Special 
Media Preservation provides “agency-wide 
laboratory services and technical expertise 
in order to facilitate preservation and ac-
cess to the content of Federal Records in 
the custody of NARA.” It only performs its 
digital and analog reformatting of textual, 
audiovisual, micrographic, and cartograph-
ic materials for collections held by NARA, 
but decided to make the information on 
its portal widely available to encourage 
discussion. What may be of special interest 
are the charts, which delineate reformat-
ting approaches by type of original mate-
rial. The charts start with descriptions of 
desired outcomes and product scope, and 
then indicate the appropriate product to 
meet the need. The charts are meant to be 
helpful, not prescriptive, for organizations 
outside NARA.

For more information, go to www. 
archives.gov/preservation/products/.

NEDCC Webinars
The Northeast Document Conservation 
Center (NEDCC) held a live Webinar, “Risk 
Assessment for Disaster Planning,” April 
28, 2011. It was designed to introduce 
risk evaluation for cultural institutions 
and collections, as part of developing a 
disaster plan.

A recording of the Webinar is avail-
able free-of-charge at www.nedcc.org 
/about/news.freewebinar.php. Latest ver-
sion of Windows Media Player required 
for playback.

NEDCC will hold a series of live Webi-
nars, Fundamentals of Digitization, in fall 

2011. The series is designed to explain 
basic concepts to those new to digitization. 
Introduction to Image Capture will be held 
on September 22, Digital Project Planning 
on September 27, Metadata on October 18, 
Sustainable Digital Collections on October 
25, Handling Collection Materials during 
Digitization on November 15, Reformatting 
Scrapbooks on November 17, and Digital 
Disaster Planning on November 22. Each 
session will run from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. 
Eastern time.

The Webinars cost $95 each ($80 if regis-
tration is done before early-bird deadline). 
For more information, contact Kim O’Leary 
at koleary@nedcc.org or (978) 470-1010, 
ext. 226.

Personal archiving
The National Digital Information Infrastruc-
ture and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) 
has a Web page about preserving personal 
digital objects. It offers simple advice for 
preserving digital photographs, personal 
digital records, electronic mail, digital 
video, digital audio, and personal Web 
sites. There are seven basic steps to the 
preservation process: identify where the 
digital information is located, decide which 
information has long-term value, export 
the long-term information with metadata 
(depending on the format), organize the 
information, make multiple copies on dif-
ferent types of storage media and distribute 
them to geographically separate locations, 
check the readability of the copies once 
per year, and create copies on new media 
every five years. The Web page also links to 
a downloadable brochure about personal 
archiving, a printable poster, an interactive 
slideshow, a quiz, several videos, and “Pre-
serving Your Personal Digital Memories,” 
an ALCTS Webinar given by Bill LeFurgy 
on April 28, 2011.

For more information, go to http://
digitalpreservation.gov/you/. 

P r e s e r v a t i o n  N e w sJane Hedberg