Genealogy Research Support

Preserving a digital object is not the same as preserving, say, a book or photograph. You can put a book on a shelf or a photo in a box and (if kept dry and safe) look at it 50 years later. The same is not true with a digital object. This is why, in many cases, digital materials are considered more fragile than physical ones.

This press release was received via the Digital-Preservation email list. Looking at the 27-page report, this caught my eye (p 23): PDF has become a widely used file format that is integrated into many desktop applications. Before adopting any of the PDF subset file formats, organisations must consider the alternative file formats that are available, understand their content (documents and records), and how they use electronic information. It is critical to understand the purpose of the electronic information as that will be a determining factor in choosing the file format to best suit the organisation's needs. The recommendation is not to use PDF blindly, but to use it when appropriate.

From Mashable: A good roundup of self-publishing services.

A program designed to help you to transcribe the text on digital images of documents. As seen at TheFamilyCurator.com

Digitized books

Fast & Easy Bibliography Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian - Free

Written by Dr. Margaret Procter, Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto.