More on Preserving Blogs

I just wanted to mention a couple of things in relation to preserving blogs. First, I wanted to thank Marty Duren, formerly of the influential Baptist blog SBCOutpost. Marty now blogs at ie:missional (I’m not sure what ie stands for, but I hope he’s not endorsing the web browser that dare not name it’s name.) Marty was taking down his SBCOutpost blog, and he graciously provided me with a full digital copy of the blog. I like to think of it as SBCOutpost 2.0, because Marty used to have a Blogger blog before he was converted to WordPress. SBCOutpost is now at version 3.0 as a collabroblog.

Second, I think I am getting closer to an answer on how to grab blogs and store them in a way that will ensure that their arrangement remains intact. I also think that I have a solution for how to ensure that various iterations are distinctly recorded. In other words, I believe that I will be able to do for blogs what the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine does for regular sites. Better yet, I believe I can do it with entirely free software. I also think that this solution can be used for other web resources. We will see how it turns out, but at this point I have reason to be very hopeful. At this point, I am more concerned with preservation than access. I need to preserve all these “wet blogs” before they dry up.

Wet Blog Happenings

In my previous post on wet blogs (ie. Baptist blogs), I noted that I would be doing a series of posts dealing with preserving wet blogs (and blogs in general). I just wanted to point out a couple of people that seem to have similar concerns.

First, Marty Duren posted today about the relationship between blogs and traditional denominational media outlets. He argues that media outlets such as Baptist Press should be more open to publishing blogs and bloggers on their sites. Marty rightly recognizes the influences of blogs on denominational life.

Second, Timmy Brister, Owen Strachan, and Tony Kummer have developed a collaborative blog project called Said at Southern Seminary. The project aggregates blogs from many bloggers related to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and publishes content on a variety of issues. Appropriately enough, you can find out more about the project at its About page. While this project in no way guarantees the permanence of blogs or blog content, it demonstrates the concern of some bloggers for bringing together blogs related to a common object of love.

Preserving Wet Blogs

For Baptists, especially Southern Baptists, it’s been a busy year. If you don’t believe me, one Baptist blogger has been keeping a log.

Ironically, it was about this time last year that I struck up a conversation with another Southern Baptist archivist about Baptist blogs while attending the ALABI meeting in Richmond. I mentioned that the whole idea of Baptist blogs and how to preserve them really troubled me, and I asked if his organization was doing anything in the way of preserving blogs.

OCR, Open Source, and Archival Materials

While in the workshop today, I started wondering about whether there were open source OCR software options that could be used in conjunction with the GIMP. There is one piece of software that I found that does it. I also found this article, and I can’t wait to try it out sometime.

Digital Imaging Workshop

I am spending today at a Solinet workshop in Lexington, KY. The workshop deals with digital imaging. So far, it’s been fairly informative. Probably the most helpful aspect of the workshop thus far has been the discussion of the scan once methodology for digitizing images. We also received some pretty helpful handouts that have some nice tables that describe the file formats, resolution, and bit depth that you should use for master, intermediate, and access files. I may try to reproduce the tables on here later as it is pretty common information, but the way it was arranged was helpful. I am sure I will be using these tables in the archives.

Hint on Configuring the Archivists’ Toolkit on Linux

I finally got the Archivists’ Toolkit configured on a Linux machine for testing. I installed the Linux version of AT with Java VM built in. It was a hefty download, but it seems to work well so far.

I did notice one small peculiarity. When I tried to install using the sh ./InstallArchivistsToolkit.bin command from a terminal, the install would break, and I would get an error that began with awk: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2.

I did a little bit of searching and came across this post. Apparently, when using SUSE (I am using OpenSUSE) and sometimes Fedora, one encounters problems because of a line in the binary file. To quote the above post,

export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
should read
#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

The problem is, when you try to open and fix the .bin file in a text editor such as vi, it somehow mangles the code.

To fix the program, here’s what I did. First, I backed up my installer to make sure that I didn’t have to redownload. Then, I installed GHex, the Gnome Hex editor. If you’re using SUSE, you can install it with Yast. If you’re using Fedora, you can probably install it with Yum.

After you install GHex, start it. Click on File, then Open, and open the InstallArchivistsToolkit.bin install file. Left click on the right panel (ie. the one with characters that make sense.) Click on Edit, then replace. Type export LD in the right panel of the find section and #xport LD in the right panel of the replace section. Click on replace all. Cancel out of the replace dialog and save the file.

You should be able to run the file now. However, if you have to make this modification, you will also have to modify more of the Archivists’ Toolkit files in the exact same manner. I had to enter my Archivists_Toolkit directory and change both the Archivists_Toolkit and the AT_Initialize_Database files as well in order to get the program to run correctly. If in doubt about any part of the program, run that part from the command line, and watch for the results. If it fails because of this error, you will see awk: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2 when it fails. If you see that, you know you need to edit the file.

More on Archon

For those interested in finding out more about the Archon Project, the project’s website now has a listserv and better documentation.

New Tool for Archivists

I mentioned earlier that the Archivist’s Toolkit had been released. Tomorrow, the Archon Project is scheduled to release version 1.10 of Archon. I played with version 1. It was easy to install and a very powerful tool. The digital library function was particularly promising. I noticed a couple of bugs in version 1 while testing it, so I didn’t put it into production. I am fairly certain that these bugs will be remedied in this latest release, and I cannot wait until I get the time to install and test it. All the folks at UIUC who were involved in this project need to be congratulated for their vision and vigor because they brought such a project into being. What an interesting and exciting time it is to be an archivist!

Fear and Loathing in the Digital Ice Age

And before you ask, digital ice age does not refer to my lack of posting (Peggy, I promise I’ve not forgotten you). The title refers to two interesting pieces that I enjoyed reading today and wanted to mention. The first is a post by a “Dangerous” LIS student who wants to be an archivist.  She’s asking some of the questions that should keep us up at night, especially if we believe Ham was correct about selecting materials that document human experience.

The second is a piece from Popular Mechanics on the instability of digital information (HT: Russ).  I really enjoyed this article. It basically repeats some of the same things I have read and heard archivists say about digital preservation, except for the final line:

And remember, a printed copy is sometimes the best form of backup.

It’s funny. I often think that too. Almost every digital preservation work I have read and workshop I have attended says this is not the case. After all, archivists rightly contend that metadata is important to ensure the authenticity of documents. And authenticity is extremely important. Still, I often think that it’s better to have a printed, stable copy of a work with little or no metadata, than it is to have no document at all.

Certifiable.

Well, my wife always knew that I was certifiable, but now everyone else does as well. I am now a certified archivist. The envelope came from the ACA this past weekend, and I opened it with much trepidation. I cannot tell you how elated I was to complete this goal in my life. I studied for this exam for seven months. I am so thankful that the Lord gave me the perseverance to finish studying and the recall to pass the exam.

I intend to post later on how I would recommend studying for the exam. I will try to add links to several electronic sources that I found helpful.

Now that I am a C. A. (that’s the first time I have typed those letters! Boy, that felt good!) I would be glad to help any future candidates study for the exam. I did not realize until late in the study process that the ACA offers to pair certified archivists with candidates to help them prepare for the exam. If I had realized that sooner, I would have availed myself of the opportunity.

I am also willing to proctor the exam, if there is ever a group in Louisville, KY, that wants to take the exam. I am thankful to Mark Meade, archivist at Bellarmine University, for proctoring my exam, and if I can ever do the same for anyone else, I would like to.

Once again, thanks to Michele, Paul, Mr. Keisling, Taffey, Laura, and all my archives workers for encouraging me as I prepared for the exam.