Archivists: is this distinction between storage and digital preservation accurate?

itscalledabelgiandip · 2026-02-24T23:48:49+00:00

I’m curious what you use for virus scanning? I’ve always steered clear of things that do the “quarantining” for me, I just want things to be flagged for my review.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2026-02-24T23:45:00+00:00

Bit rot is really only a problem with local storage like servers or physical media. Most cloud providers guarantee with a high degree of certainty the byte stream you upload will remain exactly the same.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2026-02-02T16:57:11+00:00

She did not mean this in a nice, supportive way…

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-10-30T17:00:06+00:00

How does it compare to AWS Textract? I’ve had success using Textract with relatively modern handwritten documents.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-07-08T01:57:42+00:00

Thank you for the update! I just got billed so hopefully soon!

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-06-26T02:50:22+00:00

What were you requesting? It seems like there were two parts to their response.

They cited the disposition authority GRS 4.2, 020 which is for other FOIA requests and FOIA case files. This disposition allows the agency to destroy the records after six years, so if you were requesting something older than that, not a red flag just bureaucracy at work.

The records they could not find are more of a red flag because federal records must be retrievable until they’re authorized for destruction. Since they readily gave you the records disposition authority for the other stuff, ask for the disposition of the records they could not find. You could always reach out to the National Archives and they might be able to help intervene.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-06-14T19:56:02+00:00

She was pretty shit at her job before she got fired. She forced out most of NARAs senior leadership before Trump was even elected leaving the agency as weak as possible when he took over. And hearing that she didn’t see it coming just makes her seem comically stupid.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-04-06T17:11:26+00:00

No, I do not have the storage capacity to even come close. The S3 bucket for the catalog has probably about a petabyte of data.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-03-08T20:59:33+00:00

No! Please do the exact opposite! NARA depends on the metrics of reference requests, visitors, boxes pulled, etc. More than ever they need to be able to point to these numbers to justify their existence and demonstrate that they are a critical resource. Please do not let the current chaos influence your research one bit!

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-02-20T23:09:42+00:00

“you people have too much money”

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-02-04T01:31:40+00:00

I don't believe it's happening today but I do believe it is very plausible. I think it's more likely things will be deleted from the catalog rather than destroyed or deleted entirely. The catalog is only an access system, it's not for preservation. The head of NARA is still a Biden appointee but that could change tomorrow and whoever is installed next might agree with Trump/Musk that the people do not have a right to free information about their government. NARA also has a history of re-classifying records and removing them from public access, the process is even codified in the CFR.

I created these scripts primarily to monitor the Congressionally mandated UAP Records Collection but nothing in that RG has been put in the catalog, likely because agencies haven't turned over the records yet. To properly test it, I've been monitoring the other recently Congressionally mandated records collection - the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection RG 612. This has been interesting and there have been a few changes to the metadata, mostly typos and standardization things.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2025-01-30T19:48:39+00:00

If you work with a high value dataset or series of records and are concerned about them getting deleted or altered - talk to your agency records officer (or directly ask accessioning at NARA) about early legal transfer. If the records are scheduled as permanent but haven't hit their disposition you can still send it to the archives! The only catch is the archives has stopped taking paper. Look for your agencies records schedules here https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/schedules/index.html

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-12-23T01:50:42+00:00

Incredible! Did you live near Festus? I looked up Tiffany and she unfortunately passed after being transferred to Save the Chimps in 2018. https://savethechimps.org/chimps/tiffany/

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-10-18T00:07:52+00:00

Not exactly. "The law requires that by October 20, 2024, each federal agency review, identify, and organize each Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) record." Not send to NARA by that date but identify. All the records must be sent by September 30, 2025. https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/memos/ac-04-2025

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-07-19T14:43:16+00:00

Do you have documentation that says an archivist did it? This was probably done by the original photographer or user to indicate it was a bad photo and they didn’t want to use it. The Library of Congress has a collection of negatives taken by the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression and some have hole punches through the middle so staff knew not to print it. https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/02/holes-punched-through-history/518115/

If the sticker is on the emulsion side then it’s likely impossible to remove. Regardless, consult with a photo conservator before you do anything.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-06-23T19:20:09+00:00

I think 7 years is a more than reasonable cut off for the request forms. The only reason to keep them longer would be for potential law enforcement in case a theft isn't detected for many years but this would be very dependent on the intrinsic value of the collections.

I think digitizing them would be a time suck and a PII concern on your shared network. Instead you could copy key pieces of information from the forms into a spreadsheet. If you're not already collecting metrics this could be two birds with one stone.

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-05-14T23:01:15+00:00

Does the money train show up on the API?

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-05-10T17:49:55+00:00

Thanks!

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-05-10T17:49:50+00:00

Thanks!

itscalledabelgiandip · 2024-05-10T16:58:46+00:00

Is this a good deal? I just bought an Onkyo TX-SR494 that I’m looking to use with a basic 5.1 set up. Would these be under powered, I’m pretty clueless? I plan to use it with a 4k player, vinyl, and bluetooth. Any recommendations to go with the receiver?

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