Digital Library of Georgia: November 2 is World Digital Preservation Day 2023!. “We completely understand that most people 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.”
University of Maine: UMaine IMRC uses its tools to preserve historic fly rods — including Teddy Roosevelt’s. “Fly fishing is an essential piece of Maine’s history and culture. The artists at the University of Maine’s Innovative Media Research and Commercialization (IMRC) Center knew this when they were approached with the task of using the tools at their disposal to help Thomas Rod Co., a historic fly rod maker based in Brewer, preserve and recreate its legacy designs — including the one personally used by President Theodore Roosevelt over 100 years ago.”
Arkeonews: Staging of religion on rock paintings that are thousands of years old in southern Egypt desert. “Egyptologists at the University of Bonn and the University of Aswan want to systematically record hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions dating from the Neolithic to the Arab period and document them in a database. The desert in southern Egypt is filled with hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions oldest dating from the fifth millennium B.C. and few have been studied.”
Phys.org: ‘Zero plant extinction’ is possible, says plant ecologist . “Like animals, many plant species are struggling to adapt to a human-dominated planet. However, plants are often overlooked in conservation efforts, even though they are cheaper and easier to protect than animals and play a pivotal role in bolstering our food, fuel and medical systems.”
AFP: Iraqi conservators strive to preserve ancient manuscripts. “In a country that bears the scars of decades of conflict and has seen antiquities and cultural heritage regularly plundered, the House of Manuscripts’ collection has managed to survive. It was safely stashed away in the Baghdad suburbs, while the national museum was ransacked in the turmoil following the 2003 US-led invasion…. The collection, now ensconced in the national museum in the capital Baghdad, includes books, parchments and calligraphy boards, some of them damaged by humidity, pests and centuries of use.”
Kotaku Australia: How Do You Preserve A Video Game?. “The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) very recently appointed Chris Arneil as their Assistant Curator in Games, which is the first time they have had someone in a full-time role regarding video game curation in their archive…. To learn a little more about what goes into the work of preserving games, as well as how the NFSA will go about archiving the history of the Australian video games industry, I decided to sit down and have a chat with Arneil.”
Ars Technica: How hobbyist hackers are preserving Pokémon’s past—and shaping its future. “While Nintendo, the games’ publisher, hasn’t worked to make older Pokémon games accessible on modern hardware—or affordable on older gear—a certain demographic of dedicated fans has taken it upon themselves to not just preserve legacy Pokémon titles but to actively improve them. These volunteer ROM hackers and preservationists work to keep the passions of an aging generation of Pokémon masters alive, all while fighting occasionally brutal legal crackdowns from Nintendo.”
Phys .org: Support for art and other cultural objects can be strengthened by highlighting their collective value. “New research into the sacredness of artistic objects shows that it’s possible to get people to see just about any artwork as sacred—even an amateur drawing—so long as they believe that the art connects humanity to something bigger than itself. And when people do that, they are more willing to put themselves out to ensure it’s protected.”
Capitol Beat: Wanted: New homes for historic bridges. “The Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) is trying to find homes for historic bridges that have outlived their usefulness and need to be replaced. The agency’s Office of Environmental Services announced Wednesday the launching of a website that will spread the word about historic bridges that are available for relocation and preservation.”
KentOnline: Rochester Castle captured by drones to create digital model. “A detailed digital model for conservation work at Rochester Castle has been created from drone imagery. Commercial ‘pilot’ Geoff Watkins flew his craft over the historic building as part of a partnership scheme with English Heritage and Medway Council.”
The Washington Post: 4 million cards. 4,000 drawers. And a whole lot of paper cuts. A coalition of book lovers rushes to save U-Va.’s card catalogue.. “They’d just finished setting up projectors to create a replica of the planetarium Thomas Jefferson had envisioned spanning the University of Virginia’s Rotunda dome when Neal Curtis and Sam Lemley stopped. They looked at each other. And they decided they had to come up with a plan — immediately They walked into the school’s Alderman Library and promised they wouldn’t leave that night until they had found a way to save the old card catalogue.”
Phys .org: Novel digitization methods and restoration technologies for preserving cultural heritage. “How can we protect and preserve cultural heritage? Researchers from 16 Fraunhofer Institutes are collaborating on the executive board’s cultural heritage project to develop the technologies needed for this undertaking. Whether it is visible in historical temples, ancient statues, or paintings by the great masters, cultural heritage must be preserved. But maintaining historical art treasures is not solely the responsibility of restorers – this task calls for research and the high-tech solutions it can provide. A glance inside some of the Fraunhofer labs reveals numerous researchers working on just these kinds of solutions.”
Taipei Times: ‘Frozen ark’ to preserve species. “Taiwanese researchers are contributing to a global initiative to identify, document and preserve the world’s species and biodiversity by developing cryobanking, DNA barcoding and online database programs, officials from the Forestry Bureau and the Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center told a news conference in Taipei on Thursday.”
Live Science: ‘Doomsday’ Library Joins Seed Vault in Arctic Norway. “Known as the Arctic World Archive, the vault will act as a library of sorts, a storage option for governments and scientific institutions, as well as companies and private individuals, to keep their data safe. Though the vault’s security is high-tech, the medium for the new data archive is analog — photosensitive film. (Whereas digital data is stored as discrete 1s and 0s, analog data refers to a continuous recording of physical signals, like a record player’s needle translating bumps and dips into music.)”
It’s not all just documents. From Kotaku: Why Some Video Games Are In Danger of Disappearing Forever. “Years of neglect are eroding gaming history. Cartridges rot in garages, companies horde demos that they will never release, and obscure titles fade into the ether. Some games may even be lost forever.”
