I’m going through our events page on the Small Technology Foundation web site¹ and porting the entries there to the new version of our web site that I’m building in Kitten² and it’s depressing how many event sites have just disappeared.

Thank goodness for archive.org.

¹ https://small-tech.org
² https://kitten.small-web.org

I am still able to read images and source code stored on CD-RW over 20 years ago. If not abused, hard drives can also last that long, although their mechanical complexity makes it more likely that something will fail. SSDs are definitely no good for long term storage, and USB thumb drives are similar.

So if you want the Deep Future to know about something digital then archive grade DVD, or CD-R, or just printing a hard copy on archival acid-free paper is about as good as it gets.

There are many reasons to archive stuff, and we are in a time where things such as scientific data or books on certain topics are at risk of being disappeared from official availability.

#archiving

This thread is going to be a bit of a whiny rant, so if you're not up for that kind of thing, best skip it.
A couple months ago a call went out on the interwebz from a researcher worried that the government data his research depended on, many terabytes, might be taken down. He asked people to help him download it as quickly as possible, after which he said he would set up a new centralized location for them to upload it to for permanent storage.
#SafeguardingResearch #archiving
1/5

I'm curious, does anyone know of a good way to find archived copies of videos from the video streaming app/service Periscope? I'm trying to find helpful suggestions for an acquaintance.

I took a look at archive.org, and it looks like there are a fair number of videos under the subject "periscope", but not a complete set and not containing what my acquaintance was looking for.

I did find this collection of files from @ArchiveTeam, but I have no idea what they are or how to make use of them:
https://archive.org/details/archiveteam_periscope

[BLOG] Scoping PhD Theses: Some initial reflections

Find out more about our scoping of practices around PhD eTheses, with a focus on #archiving and #preservation

https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/scoping-phd-theses-initial-reflections-wp7/

[BLOG] Putting the 'Open' in 'Thoth Open Archiving Network'

Our Archiving group announce a new direction for our #OpenAccess archiving solution

https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/thoth-open-archiving-network/

@Thoth_metadata

"The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that the General Services Administration converted 14,000 magnetic to digital records, and claimed the process saved a million dollars a year.

@DOGE on X: The @USGSA IT team just saved $1M per year by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes (70 yr old technology for information storage) to permanent modern digital records.
The problem is, magnetic tapes are regarded by storage and archivist professionals as being a stable, reliable, and safe medium for long-term data storage. Just because it’s a 70 year old medium doesn’t mean those records needed a massive overhaul to digital, that it will save any money in the long term, or that the new storage method is better.

Casual storage enjoyers might hear tape and think fragile spools of plastic that can rot or wear out. But digital storage is not necessarily a better option if you’re trying to keep information for years; digital storage rot, or “bit rot,” can affect a hard drive over years of storage, making the data corrupt or inaccessible. This happens when the electrical charge inside a solid-state storage device—like the kind of digital drive we can assume DOGE is talking about—leaks and causes the drive to lose performance."

https://www.404media.co/doge-gsa-magnetic-tape-archives-digital-storage/

Vanishing Culture: Preserving the #Library System
https://blog.archive.org/2025/04/07/vanishing-culture-preserving-the-library-system
Based on a simple but catastrophic business decision, the big #publishers are making it impossible for libraries to do their core functions of preservation and enduring access in the digital era. #Netflix, for instance, recently changed its terms of service to explicitly prohibit #archiving, therefore allowing them to remove or change any movie for all subscribers at once
#conservation
#archive

[NEW BLOG] Scoping PhD Theses: some initial reflections

Our initial scoping begins to lift the lid, providing a view to #archiving and #preservation practices surrounding eTheses in the UK

https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/scoping-phd-theses-initial-reflections-wp7/

One of the few bonuses of working in a university is that you get full access to the library. I wanted to read an obscure article from an obscure journal printed in 1985. No electronic copy exists online. I requested it on the uni library website and someone went down to the archive, found the article, scanned it and emailed it to me a couple of hours later. Now I've got a taste for it. I'll be sending them off to scan all manner of old articles #library #libraries #Librarians #archive #archiving #research

New extended blog post by
@copim 's Archiving group, in which we identify a list of features that are deemed essential for archiving solutions to account for the specifics of #openacces content, including #OAbooks.

#MetadataMatters #archiving #transparency #openarchiving

https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/thoth-open-archiving-network/release/1

Salon Series 54: Palestine in Print: Publishing and Archiving as Tools for Resistance
Ren Allathkani, MJ Fair, Nicole Kaack, and Kate Laster
Thu, Apr 3, 2025 at 6:00pm–7:30pm PT

Jewish and Palestinian artists and archivists examine the critical role of print media in protecting and archiving endangered voices, histories, and traditions.⁠

Register to attend online or in person: https://letterformarchive.org/shop/salon-series-54-palestine-in-print-publishing-and-archiving-as-tools-for-resistance/?utm_source=Mastodon

(Images: Kate Laster)

Question re #SafeguardingResearch
We encounter 'web applications' that our current method of archiving don't preserve.

Things like [we need a better example, this one is already gone (but the data preserved) https://social.coop/@edsu/114206452552797815]

We are mostly using https://github.com/openzim/zimit to create WARC files and combining them into a single ZIM.
(This uses the browsertrix crawler)

Any ideas on how to archive not just the content, but also the functionality of such applications?
#DigiPres #Web #Archiving

Installed and started the ArchiveTeam Warrior. Very smooth experience.

It downloads stuff and puts it into the Internet Archive.

I took the "ArchiveTeam’s Choice" project and it chose public telegram channels. It's not taking a lot of bandwidth or memory or space or computing, as far as I can tell. It might take too much of my time and focus if I continue staring at the dashboard to try and figure out what all that stuff is.

http://warrior.archiveteam.org/

@internetarchive

New blogpost about #Obsidian as a digital community archiving tool.

I describe a collaborative way to record information, in an intuitive text format (markdown) and live visualization as a network graph:

https://nullmuseum.hypotheses.org/1276

does someone have a file server hosted at home (or privately enough that it is YOURS) and wants to archive all Linus Tech Tips Floatplane Exclusives??? (in a way I could still download/access them if I want to)

I really need some storage space :'D and I want to archive this forever if possible

it's 154GB of 1080p30fps videos, all the Floatplane exclusives from when they started being a thing, until 20th February (I really could only afford one month so some recent vids are already missing)

(please boost for maximum reach )

ComicBook: ElfQuest Creators Wendy and Richard Pini Create Landmark Endowment for Future Comics, Collections, and More. “Wendy and Richard Pini are responsible for one of comics’ most beloved franchises in ElfQuest, and fans from all over can see their work up-close in Columbia University’s growing collection and archive. Now Wendy and Richard have teamed up with Columbia University once […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/06/comicbook-elfquest-creators-wendy-and-richard-pini-create-landmark-endowment-for-future-comics-collections-and-more/