Archive note: I conducted this interview for the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training’s Preservation Technology Podcast. It was originally published by NCPTT/National Park Service on June 2, 2010. I’m preserving a record of the conversation here as part of my podcast and interview archive. The original NCPTT/NPS source remains the authoritative publication.
From the transcript
The interview repeatedly connects preservation with access. I ask not only how files are digitized and stored, but how they reach the largest possible audience, how use is understood, how archival formats are chosen, and what smaller heritage organizations can do. Arrington’s closing point is especially durable: digital collections create new technical decisions, but the fundamental responsibilities of preservation and access are not new.
In this conversation
- Digitization and digital preservation at the Library of Congress
- Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) collections
- Scanning, file formats, metadata, storage, and sustainable approaches to preserving digital documents
- Balancing preservation-quality master files with formats designed for public access and everyday use
- How researchers, students, preservationists, and the public discover and use digitized federal collections
- The relationship between physical archival materials and the digital systems created to extend their usefulness
- What smaller museums, archives, and cultural organizations can learn from large-scale digital preservation practice
- The enduring institutional responsibilities of preservation, access, documentation, and public knowledge
Kit Arrington explains how the Library of Congress was digitizing and presenting HABS, HAER, and HALS documentation, how files were being shared with the public, how users were actually using those records, and how the Library thought about sustainable archival formats.
Series: Preservation Technology Podcast
Episode: 020
Guest: Kit Arrington
Interviewer: Jeff Guin
Original publisher: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training / National Park Service
Theme: Digital Preservation & Knowledge Infrastructure
Listen, read the transcript, and view the original episode at the National Park Service.
Preservation note: A preservation copy of the original MP3 is retained in the Voices of the Past archive.
Critical Questions
This artifact contributes to more than one recurring question in the archive:
- How do we preserve memory when the systems carrying it keep changing?
- What happens when useful tools become systems we depend on?
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