Mandy Mastrovita – Page 21

Let’s recognize the role of #libraries and #librarians in preserving digital records today on #WDPD2021!

Are you a custodian of cultural heritage materials?

Have you made them available online?

Have you thoughtfully considered long-term preservation as well as access to your materials?

One of the main mottos of digital preservation is “Digitization is NOT Digital Preservation.”

That is to say, the digitization and hosting of your items online are great for access, but this is still not preservation.

Noted digital preservationist, writer, and historian Abby Smith Rumsey emphasizes:

“Just as environments benefit from biodiversity, most especially during periods of rapid ecological change, so too does culture. The more voices we capture and transmit into the future, the larger our collective memory bank grows and the larger the mental toolkit vital to our destiny as problem-solvers.”

We completely understand that most folks don’t have the bandwidth to thoughtfully consider long-term preservation as well as access–but please remember there are people and resources that you can call upon to ensure your digital content is preserved.

World Digital Preservation Day is our opportunity to remind you that digital preservation professionals can teach you:

- some of the easiest ways for people to get started with digital preservation at their institutions or with their personal materials.
- what people should preserve first.
- what happens when people don’t put together a plan to preserve their digital content.
- Contact us if you have questions.

RESOURCES

For non-digital preservationists:
- Visit the World Digital Preservation Day website
- Read the series of “Discover Good Practice Technology Watch Publications”, prepared and organized by the Digital Preservation Coalition, and designed for non-digital preservationists!
- Take a look at Amy Rudersdorf’s article on “The benefits and drawbacks of DIY digital preservation”
- There is also helpful information in the American Library Association (ALA)’s LibGuides on digital preservation.

For professionals (librarians, archivists, curators) wanting to dig deeper:

- Take a look at the Library of Congress’ Recommended Formats Statement for 2021-2022 to just get a taste of some best practices.
- Browse through NDSA and DLF’s Digital Preservation Glossary.
- Read more about The Digital Preservation Coalition
- Look at the Digital Preservation Handbook, a great place to start for getting started with digital preservation
- Nominate at-risk digital materials at The Bit List of Digitally Endangered Species
- Consult the Executive Guide on Digital Preservation, to help talk to others in your organization about digital preservation
- Find helpful online modules on how to train your staff on digital preservation
- Find timely information on how to manage digital preservation during the pandemic from Exact Editions, and an article on the University of Michigan’s Digital Preservation Baseline document by Lance Thomas Stuchell.
- Check out Digital Preservation: Tools and Strategies on GitHub

DLG resources on digital preservation

- The DLG has several archived presentation webinars available for you to see ways digital preservation has been approached in Georgia and other Southern states:
  - Digital Preservation for Libraries: What It Is, Why You Need It, and How You Can Get Started, Mary Willoughby (Digital Library of Georgia), GPLS Tech Bootcamp 2019
  - Preservation in a Digital World, Ashley Shull (Athens-Clarke County Public Library), Brandon Pieczko (University of Georgia), Mary Willoughby (Digital Library of Georgia), GALILEO Annual Conference 2019
  - What’s in Your Bag? Practical tools and strategies for scalable digital preservation, Society of Georgia Archivists Annual Meeting 2018
  - An Introduction to Digital Preservation, Elizabeth La Beaud (Mississippi Digital Library), 2019
  - The DLG also offers a slate of digital preservation services that you should feel free to contact us about.

On social media:
- Follow #WDPD2021 today, and @CLIRnews, @dpc_chat, @ICArchive, @matthewpburgess, @NDSA2, @CLIRDLF, @digipreserve, and @Sarah_DPC beyond to keep up with what some of our leading digital preservationists have to say!

Articles Cited:

Rumsey, Abby Smith. “How to Preserve Cultural Memory in the Digital Age.”HuffPost, December 7, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/culture-memory-digital_b_10357622 [accessed October 6, 2021]

In partnership with the Georgia State University Special Collections and Archives (Music and Broadcasting Collections) the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) has digitized 24 scrapbooks from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) Collection dating from 1945-1985 that are now available online as part of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Collection.

This work was done as part of a competitive digitization grant intended to broaden partner participation in the DLG and provide digitization services costing up to $7500 for historic collections from non-profit Georgia cultural heritage institutions.

In 2017, the ASO donated its institutional records to GSU Special Collections and Archives. Among these records were the scrapbooks, which include newspaper clippings of concert previews, reviews, and highlights of guest performers, composers, and conductors, as well as photographs, advertising materials, and organizational records such as memos and correspondence.

Kevin Fleming, the popular music and culture archivist at Georgia State Libraries Special Collections describes the significance of this material that documents the arrival of the ASO’s Music Director Robert Shaw in the late 1960s, and the effects of the Civil Rights movement on the orchestra:

“The few scrapbooks from this time period show similar changes as it relates to the orchestra. Nick Jones, ASO’s former program annotator, indicates that ‘under Shaw’s leadership, the ASO worked to improve its connections with minority communities, including actively seeking African American instrumentalists to fill vacancies in the orchestra. There are few Black soloists, instrumental or vocal, who did not perform with the ASO during Shaw’s tenure, and the Spelman and Morehouse College Glee Clubs have frequently been heard. In connection with Morehouse, the orchestra in 1972 gave the world-premiere staging of the first surviving opera by a black composer, Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. Additionally, T. J. Anderson was the ASO’s Composer-in-Residence for the 1969-1970 season and works by African American composers including Anderson, Ulysses Kay, and George Walker were performed.’”

Kerry Brunson, a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, describes the importance of having these materials freely available online to her students:

“My students have created award-winning projects that pull from the ASO Archive’s digitized collection of photographs and concert programs. The addition of the scrapbooks would help provide context–not only would students have access to the rare ephemera within the scrapbooks themselves, but they would also be privy to what was deemed important by the people who compiled them.”

[View the entire collection online]

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About the Georgia State University Special Collections and Archives (Music and Broadcasting Collections)

The Georgia State University Archives Music and Radio Broadcasting Collections began as the Johnny Mercer Collection and grew to include related materials that include: other musicians’ and artists’ papers, early country, bluegrass and Southern gospel music, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra archives, and records of WSB Radio and other Georgia stations. The collection contains more than 20,000 pieces of published sheet music, Tune-Dex cards and arrangements by American songwriters, as well as 50,000 recordings from a variety of genres. For more information, visit the Music and Radio Broadcasting Collections research guides at research.library.gsu.edu/musicradio

About the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra continues to affirm its position as one of America’s leading orchestras with excellent live performances, renowned guest artist features, and engaging education initiatives. As a cornerstone for artistic development in the Southeast, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performs a full schedule of more than 150 concerts, including educational and community concerts, each year for a combined audience of more than a quarter-million people. Visit www.aso.org

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished by developing, maintaining, and preserving digital collections and online digital library resources. DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project.

Visit the DLG at dlg.usg.edu.

Facebook: http://facebook.com/DigitalLibraryofGeorgia/

Twitter: @DigLibGA

Selected images from the collection: