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118-701: The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association defined digital preservation as combination of "policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time." According to the Harrod's Librarian Glossary , digital preservation is the method of keeping digital material alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete. The necessity for digital preservation mainly arises because of

236-478: A historically black college or university . She also was president during COVID-19 and the live annual conference was cancelled and delivered virtually. Brown characterized her presidency as one of "change, loss, and hope." In 2021, Patty Wong became the first Asian-American president of the ALA. In 2022 Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada was the first Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander American president. In 2023

354-484: A pathname to be the character string that must be entered into a file system by a user in order to identify a file. On early personal computers using the CP/M operating system, filenames were always 11 characters. This was referred to as the 8.3 filename with a maximum of an 8 byte name and a maximum of a 3 byte extension. Utilities and applications allowed users to specify filenames without trailing spaces and include

472-610: A "Trusted Digital Repository" (TDR) is defined as "one whose mission is to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now and in the future." The TDR must include the following seven attributes: compliance with the reference model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS), administrative responsibility, organizational viability, financial sustainability, technological and procedural suitability, system security, procedural accountability. The Trusted Digital Repository Model outlines relationships among these attributes. The report also recommended

590-414: A Fortran compiler might use the extension FOR for source input file, OBJ for the object output and LST for the listing. Although there are some common extensions, they are arbitrary and a different application might use REL and RPT . Extensions have been restricted, at least historically on some systems, to a length of 3 characters, but in general can have any length, e.g., html . There

708-464: A Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information with the main purpose of investigating what needed to be done to ensure long-term preservation and continued access to the digital records. The final report published by the Task Force (Garrett, J. and Waters, D., ed. (1996). "Preserving digital information: Report of the task force on archiving of digital information.") became a fundamental document in

826-469: A collection, and is especially applicable during digitization of analog media. Using a file naming convention, such as the 8.3 filename or the Warez standard naming , will ensure compatibility with other systems and facilitate migration of data, and deciding between descriptive (containing descriptive words and numbers) and non-descriptive (often randomly generated numbers) file names is generally determined by

944-421: A common problem and one that is a constant worry for a digital archivist—how to prepare for the future. Digital content can also present challenges to preservation because of its complex and dynamic nature, e.g., interactive Web pages, virtual reality and gaming environments, learning objects, social media sites. In many cases of emergent technological advances there are substantial difficulties in maintaining

1062-544: A definition of Preservation Description Information in the Open Archival Information System Reference Model; and defined migration as a crucial function of digital archives. The concepts and recommendations outlined in the report laid a foundation for subsequent research and digital preservation initiatives. To standardize digital preservation practice and provide a set of recommendations for preservation program implementation,

1180-401: A dot before the extension. The dot was not actually stored in the directory. Using only 7 bit characters allowed several file attributes to be included in the actual filename by using the high-order-bit; these attributes included Readonly, Archive, and System. Eventually this was too restrictive and the number of characters allowed increased. The attribute bits were moved to a special block of

1298-589: A file: additionally, the exact byte representation of the filename on the storage device is needed. This can be solved at the application level, with some tricky normalization calls. The issue of Unicode equivalence is known as "normalized-name collision". A solution is the Non-normalizing Unicode Composition Awareness used in the Subversion and Apache technical communities. This solution does not normalize paths in

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1416-459: A filename, although most utilities do not handle them well. Filenames may include things like a revision or generation number of the file, a numerical sequence number (widely used by digital cameras through the DCF standard ), a date and time (widely used by smartphone camera software and for screenshots ), or a comment such as the name of a subject or a location or any other text to help identify

1534-406: A filesystem to storing components of names, so increasing limits often requires an incompatible change, as well as reserving more space. A particular issue with filesystems that store information in nested directories is that it may be possible to create a file with a complete pathname that exceeds implementation limits, since length checking may apply only to individual parts of the name rather than

1652-695: A group of librarians proposed that the ALA schedule a new round table program discussion on the social responsibilities of librarians at its annual conference in Kansas City . This group called themselves the Organizing Committee for the ALA Round Table on Social Responsibilities of Libraries. This group drew in many other under-represented groups in the ALA who lacked power, including the Congress for Change in 1969. This formation of

1770-404: A key enabler for digital preservation, and includes technical information for digital objects, information about a digital object's components and its computing environment, as well as information that documents the preservation process and underlying rights basis. It allows organizations or individuals to understand the chain of custody . Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) ,

1888-463: A large quantity of information exists in digital forms, including emails, blogs, social networking websites, national elections websites, web photo albums, and sites which change their content over time. With digital media it is easier to create content and keep it up-to-date, but at the same time there are many challenges in the preservation of this content, both technical and economic. Unlike traditional analog objects such as books or photographs where

2006-421: A maximum of eight plus three characters was a filename alias of " long file name.??? " as a way to conform to 8.3 limitations for older programs. This property was used by the move command algorithm that first creates a second filename and then only removes the first filename. Other filesystems, by design, provide only one filename per file, which guarantees that alteration of one filename's file does not alter

2124-593: A period must occur at least once each 8 characters, two consecutive periods could not appear in the name, and must end with a letter or digit. By convention, the letters and numbers before the first period was the account number of the owner or the project it belonged to, but there was no requirement to use this convention. On the McGill University MUSIC/SP system, file names consisted of The Univac VS/9 operating system had file names consisting of In 1985, RFC   959 officially defined

2242-750: A permanent committee – Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The ALA made revisions to strengthen the Library Bill of Rights in June 1948, approved the Statement on Labeling in 1951 to discourage labeling material as subversive, and adopted the Freedom to Read Statement and the Overseas Library Statement in 1953. The ALA has worked throughout its history to define, extend, protect and advocate for equity of access to information. In 1945

2360-549: A popular strategy for retaining the functionality of old video game systems, such as with the MAME project. The feasibility of emulation as a catch-all solution has been debated in the academic community. (Granger, 2000) American Library Association The American Library Association ( ALA ) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It

2478-475: A previous state. This effort is often enabled by the creation, validation, and management of checksums . While checksums are the primary mechanism for monitoring fixity at the individual file level, an important additional consideration for monitoring fixity is file attendance. Whereas checksums identify if a file has changed, file attendance identifies if a file in a designated collection is newly created, deleted, or moved. Tracking and reporting on file attendance

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2596-860: A program designed to maintain integrity aims to "ensure data is recorded exactly as intended, and upon later retrieval, ensure the data is the same as it was when it was originally recorded". Unintentional changes to data are to be avoided, and responsible strategies should be put in place to detect unintentional changes and react as appropriately determined. However, digital preservation efforts may necessitate modifications to content or metadata through responsibly-developed procedures and by well-documented policies. Organizations or individuals may choose to retain original, integrity-checked versions of content and/or modified versions with appropriate preservation metadata. Data integrity practices also apply to modified versions, as their state of capture must be maintained and resistant to unintentional modifications. The integrity of

2714-422: A record can be preserved through bit-level preservation, fixity checking, and capturing a full audit trail of all preservation actions performed on the record. These strategies can ensure protection against unauthorised or accidental alteration. File fixity is the property of a digital file being fixed, or unchanged. File fixity checking is the process of validating that a file has not changed or been altered from

2832-539: A record maintaining their use and change history, which allows the future users to verify that the contents of the object are valid. International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) is a collaborative research initiative led by the University of British Columbia that is focused on addressing issues of long-term preservation of authentic digital records. The research

2950-638: A repeat of the powerful 19th-century geomagnetic storm known as the " Carrington Event ". The Arctic World Archive, stored on specially developed film coated with silver halide with a lifespan of 500+ years, represents more secure snapshot of data, with archiving intended at five-year intervals. In 2006, the Online Computer Library Center developed a four-point strategy for the long-term preservation of digital objects that consisted of: There are several additional strategies that individuals and organizations may use to actively combat

3068-424: A specific challenge is the typically non-availability of the source code as commercial software is normally distributed only in compiled binary form. Without the source code an adaption ( porting ) on modern computing hardware or operating systems is most often impossible, therefore the original hardware and software context needs to be emulated . Another potential challenge for software preservation can be

3186-580: A standard against censorship and was adopted by the ALA in 1939. This has been recognized as the moment defining modern librarianship as a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the right to read. ALA appointed a committee to study censorship and recommend policy after the banning of the novel The Grapes of Wrath in Kern County , California and the implementation of the Library Bill of Rights. The committee reported in 1940 that intellectual freedom and professionalism were linked and recommended

3304-402: A time when the publishing world has little diversity. Works from authors and illustrators of color make up less than 8 percent of children's titles produced in 2013. The ALA hopes this regrettable incident will be used to open a dialogue on the need for diversity in the publishing industry, particularly in regards to books for young people." In 2020 Wanda Kay Brown was the first president from

3422-432: A very useful strategy for preserving data stored on external storage media (e.g. CDs, USB flash drives, and 3.5" floppy disks). These types of devices are generally not recommended for long-term use, and the data can become inaccessible due to media and hardware obsolescence or degradation. Creating duplicate copies of data on one or more systems is called replication . Data that exists as a single copy in only one location

3540-435: A way to preserve them. The exemption was renewed in 2006, and as of 27 October 2009, has been indefinitely extended pending further rulemakings "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive". The GitHub Archive Program has stored all of GitHub 's open source code in a secure vault at Svalbard , on the frozen Norwegian island of Spitsbergen , as part of

3658-418: Is a fundamental component of digital collection management and fixity. Characterization of digital materials is the identification and description of what a file is and of its defining technical characteristics often captured by technical metadata, which records its technical attributes like creation or production environment. Digital sustainability encompasses a range of issues and concerns that contribute to

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3776-554: Is aided by the use of assigned identifiers and accurate descriptive metadata. An identifier is a unique label that is used to reference an object or record, usually manifested as a number or string of numbers and letters. As a crucial element of metadata to be included in a database record or inventory, it is used in tandem with other descriptive metadata to differentiate objects and their various instantiations. Descriptive metadata refers to information about an object's content such as title, creator, subject, date etc... Determination of

3894-653: Is available, but it is only designed to last for 50 years and it is a proprietary format, sold by just two Japanese companies, Sony and Panasonic. M-DISC is a DVD-based format that claims to retain data for 1,000 years, but writing to it requires special optical disc drives and reading the data it contains requires increasingly uncommon optical disc drives , in addition the company behind the format went bankrupt. Data stored on LTO tapes require periodic migration, as older tapes cannot be read by newer LTO tape drives. RAID arrays could be used to protect against failure of single hard drives, although care needs to be taken to not mix

4012-479: Is being conducted by focus groups from various institutions in North America , Europe , Asia , and Australia , with an objective of developing theories and methodologies that provide the basis for strategies, standards, policies, and procedures necessary to ensure the trustworthiness, reliability, and accuracy of digital records over time. Under the direction of archival science professor Luciana Duranti ,

4130-459: Is highly vulnerable to software or hardware failure, intentional or accidental alteration, and environmental catastrophes like fire, flooding, etc. Digital data is more likely to survive if it is replicated in several locations. Replicated data may introduce difficulties in refreshing, migration, versioning, and access control since the data is located in multiple places. Understanding digital preservation means comprehending how digital information

4248-635: Is identified as A4.2 within the Chain of Preservation (COP) model created by the InterPARES 2 project. Archival appraisal is not the same as monetary appraisal, which determines fair market value . Archival appraisal may be performed once or at the various stages of acquisition and processing . Macro appraisal, a functional analysis of records at a high level, may be performed even before the records have been acquired to determine which records to acquire. More detailed, iterative appraisal may be performed while

4366-606: Is no general encoding standard for filenames. File names have to be exchanged between software environments for network file transfer, file system storage, backup and file synchronization software, configuration management, data compression and archiving, etc. It is thus very important not to lose file name information between applications. This led to wide adoption of Unicode as a standard for encoding file names, although legacy software might not be Unicode-aware. Traditionally, filenames allowed any character in their filenames as long as they were file system safe. Although this permitted

4484-457: Is produced and reproduced. Because digital information (e.g., a file) can be exactly replicated down to the bit level, it is possible to create identical copies of data. Exact duplicates allow archives and libraries to manage, store, and provide access to identical copies of data across multiple systems and/or environments. Emulation is the replicating of functionality of an obsolete system. According to van der Hoeven, "Emulation does not focus on

4602-747: Is that different instances of the script or program can use different files. This makes an absolute or relative path composed of a sequence of filenames. Unix-like file systems allow a file to have more than one name; in traditional Unix-style file systems, the names are hard links to the file's inode or equivalent. Windows supports hard links on NTFS file systems, and provides the command fsutil in Windows XP, and mklink in later versions, for creating them. Hard links are different from Windows shortcuts , classic Mac OS/macOS aliases , or symbolic links . The introduction of LFNs with VFAT allowed filename aliases. For example, longfi~1.??? with

4720-546: Is the de facto standard that defines the implementable, core preservation metadata needed by most repositories and institutions. It includes guidelines and recommendations for its usage, and has developed shared community vocabularies. The challenges of long-term preservation of digital information have been recognized by the archival community for years. In December 1994, the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA) formed

4838-691: Is the oldest and largest library association in the world. During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, responded to a call for a "Convention of Librarians" to be held October 4–6, 1876, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania . IL At the end of the meeting, according to Edward G. Holley in his essay "ALA at 100", "the register was passed around for all to sign who wished to become charter members", making October 6, 1876,

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4956-479: The Arctic World Archive , with the code stored as QR codes . Another challenge surrounding preservation of digital content resides in the issue of scale. The amount of digital information being created along with the "proliferation of format types" makes creating trusted digital repositories with adequate and sustainable resources a challenge. The Web is only one example of what might be considered

5074-486: The Research Libraries Group (RLG) and Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) began a collaboration to establish attributes of a digital repository for research organizations, building on and incorporating the emerging international standard of the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS). In 2002, they published "Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities." In that document

5192-553: The Smithsonian Institution Archives considers uncompressed TIFFs to be "a good preservation format for born-digital and digitized still images because of its maturity, wide adaptation in various communities, and thorough documentation". Formats proprietary to one software vendor are more likely to be affected by format obsolescence. Well-used standards such as Unicode and JPEG are more likely to be readable in future. Significant properties refer to

5310-582: The copyright which prohibits often the bypassing of copy protection mechanisms ( Digital Millennium Copyright Act ) in case software has become an orphaned work ( Abandonware ). An exemption from the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act to permit to bypass copy protection was approved in 2003 for a period of 3 years to the Internet Archive who created an archive of "vintage software", as

5428-431: The file type . Some other file systems, such as Unix file systems, VFAT , and NTFS , treat a filename as a single string; a convention often used on those file systems is to treat the characters following the last period in the filename, in a filename containing periods, as the extension part of the filename. Multiple output files created by an application may use the same basename and various extensions. For example,

5546-490: The "data deluge". For example, the Library of Congress currently amassed 170 billion tweets between 2006 and 2010 totaling 133.2  terabytes and each Tweet is composed of 50 fields of metadata. The economic challenges of digital preservation are also great. Preservation programs require significant up front investment to create, along with ongoing costs for data ingest, data management, data storage, and staffing. One of

5664-512: The "essential attributes of a digital object which affect its appearance, behavior, quality and usability" and which "must be preserved over time for the digital object to remain accessible and meaningful." "Proper understanding of the significant properties of digital objects is critical to establish best practice approaches to digital preservation. It assists appraisal and selection, processes in which choices are made about which significant properties of digital objects are worth preserving; it helps

5782-560: The 2024–2025 term is Cindy Hohl . President-elect, Sam Helmick , will preside in 2025-2026. The executive director of the American Library Association delegates authority within ALA headquarters to ALA’s department heads, who, in carrying out their assigned duties, are called upon to use ALA’s name, and, in that name, to commit the Association to programs, activities, and binding agreements. Secretaries of

5900-607: The ALA "does not promote any 'ideology'". The Association received the Toni Morrison Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle . The Library History Round Table published the "Bibliography of Library History" database containing over 7,000 entries for books, articles, and theses in library history and related fields published from 1990 to 2022. Cindy Hohl , the first SPECTRUM Scholar to be elected president

6018-617: The ALA and the Office for Literacy and Outreach were established in 1970. In 1971, Barbara Gittings staffed a kissing booth at the ALA Conference underneath the banner, "Hug a Homosexual." This was the precipitating event that evolved into the Rainbow Round Table dedicated to supporting the information needs of LGBTQIA+ people. The American Library Association celebrated its centennial in 1976. In commemoration

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6136-705: The ALA commissioned a study, Access to Public Libraries , which found direct and indirect discrimination in American libraries. In 1967, some librarians protested against a pro- Vietnam War speech given by General Maxwell D. Taylor at the annual ALA conference in San Francisco; the former president of Sarah Lawrence College , Harold Taylor , spoke to the Middle-Atlantic Regional Library Conference about socially responsible professionalism; and less than one year later

6254-680: The ALA established an Office in Washington, D.C. named the National Relations Office under the direction of Paul Howard. In 1961, the ALA took a stand regarding service to African Americans and others, advocating for equal library service for all. An amendment to the Library Bill of Rights was passed in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, religion, national origin, or political views. Some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate. In 1963,

6372-410: The ALA guidelines on library services to the poor. The Office for Information Technology Policy was established in 1995 to act as a public policy advocate for libraries in the area of information technology. The "Congress on Professional Education" took place from April 30 to May 1, 1999 in Washington, D.C., with over 100 participating. Its purpose was to reach consensus among stakeholder groups on

6490-606: The ALA, serving as its acting president from April 11 to July 22 in 1976 upon the death of Allie Beth Martin and then elected president from July 22, 1976 to 1977. In 1979 and 1991 the ALA collaborated with the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science on two White House Conferences. In 1983 in response to the National Commission on Excellence in Education Report, A Nation at Risk , leaders in library and information science launched

6608-405: The ALA. In 2014, Courtney Young , president of the association, commented on the background and implications of a racist joke author Daniel Handler made as African American writer Jacqueline Woodson received a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming . "His comments were inappropriate and fell far short of the association's commitment to diversity," said Young. "Handler's remarks come at

6726-484: The Association prior to Carl Milam were George Burwell Utley (1911–20); Chalmers Hadley (1909–11); Edward C. Hovey (1905–7); James Ingersoll Wyer (1902–09); Frederick Winthrop Faxon (1900–02); Henry James Carr (1898–1900); Melvil Dewey (1897–98); Rutherford Platt Hayes (1896–97); Henry Livingston Elmendorf (1895–96); Frank Pierce Hill (1891–95); Mary Salome Cutler (1891); William E. Parker (1890– 1891) and Melvil Dewey (1879–90). The official purpose of

6844-766: The Bibliographical Society of America . In 1911, Theresa Elmendorf became ALA's first woman president. An analysis of the writings of the first fifteen women presidents gives more insight into the expanded role of women in the association. During World War I the ALA Executive Board initiated by Walter Lewis Brown established the Library War Service Committee to supply books and periodicals to military personnel at home and overseas. The American Library in Paris

6962-608: The Library History Round Table has been documented by the first archivist, Maynard Britchford. Additionally, the American Library Association Institutional Repository (ALAIR) provides digital access to the publications and intellectual work of the Association. ALA membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most members live and work in

7080-642: The Public Library Association of ALA published the Public Library Services for Strong Communities Report addressing the myriad ways libraries nationwide serve and sustain their communities. That same year, the Montana State Library Commission withdrew from the ALA, citing comments made by Emily Drabinski , who self-identified as a "Marxist lesbian". The Digital Public Library Ecosystem

7198-645: The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System ( OAIS ) was developed, and published in 2012. OAIS is concerned with all technical aspects of a digital object's life cycle: ingest, archival storage, data management, administration, access and preservation planning. The model also addresses metadata issues and recommends that five types of metadata be attached to a digital object: reference (identification) information, provenance (including preservation history), context, fixity (authenticity indicators), and representation (formatting, file structure, and what "imparts meaning to an object's bitstream"). In March 2000,

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7316-460: The Unicode version in use. For instance, UDF is limited to Unicode 2.0; macOS's HFS+ file system applies NFD Unicode normalization and is optionally case-sensitive (case-insensitive by default.) Filename maximum length is not standard and might depend on the code unit size. Although it is a serious issue, in most cases this is a limited one. On Linux, this means the filename is not enough to open

7434-544: The United States, with international members comprising 3.5% of total membership. The ALA is governed by an elected council and an executive board. Policies and programs are administered by committees and round tables. One of the organization's most visible tasks is overseen by the Office for Accreditation, which formally reviews and authorizes American and Canadian academic institutions that offer degree programs in library and information science . ALA's President for

7552-446: The analog context, these records may have been discarded or only a representative sample kept. However, the selection, appraisal, and prioritization of materials must be carefully considered in relation to the ability of an organization to responsibly manage the totality of these materials. Often libraries, and to a lesser extent, archives, are offered the same materials in several different digital or analog formats. They prefer to select

7670-487: The association is "to promote library service and librarianship." Members may join one or more of eight membership divisions that deal with specialized topics such as academic, school, or public libraries, technical or reference services, and library administration. Members may also join any of the nineteen round tables that are grouped around more specific interests and issues than the broader set of ALA divisions. Task forces: The Committee on Literacy develops and recommends

7788-566: The association published Libraries and the Life of the Mind in America. The American Library Association Archives, established at the time of the centennial, created an online exhibit which includes a history of the centennial. Clara Stanton Jones , president, Inaugural address was titled, “The First Step into ALA’s Second Century.” Clara Stanton Jones was the first African American president of

7906-511: The association's policies related to the promotion of multiple literacies. The Chapter Relations Committee develops and recognizes chapters as integral components of ALA, encourages discussion, activities and programs that support the mutual interests of ALA and the chapters. Filename A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a file system . Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths. A filename may (depending on

8024-527: The attributes separately from the file name. Around 1995, VFAT , an extension to the MS-DOS FAT filesystem, was introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT . It allowed mixed-case long filenames (LFNs), using Unicode characters, in addition to classic "8.3" names. Programs and devices may automatically assign names to files such as a numerical counter (for example IMG_0001.JPG ) or a time stamp with

8142-420: The authenticity, fixity , and integrity of objects over time deriving from the fundamental issue of experience with that particular digital storage medium and while particular technologies may prove to be more robust in terms of storage capacity, there are issues in securing a framework of measures to ensure that the object remains fixed while in stewardship. For the preservation of software as digital content,

8260-458: The case of born-digital content (e.g., institutional archives, websites, electronic audio and video content, born-digital photography and art, research data sets, observational data), the enormous and growing quantity of content presents significant scaling issues to digital preservation efforts. Rapidly changing technologies can hinder digital preservationists' work and techniques due to outdated and antiquated machines or technology. This has become

8378-424: The clock of their camera. Internet-connected devices such as smartphones may synchronize their clock from a NTP server. An absolute reference includes all directory levels. In some systems, a filename reference that does not include the complete directory path defaults to the current working directory . This is a relative reference. One advantage of using a relative reference in program configuration files or scripts

8496-452: The collaborative development of digital repository certifications, models for cooperative networks, and sharing of research and information on digital preservation with regard to intellectual property rights. In 2004 Henry M. Gladney proposed another approach to digital object preservation that called for the creation of "Trustworthy Digital Objects" (TDOs). TDOs are digital objects that can speak to their own authenticity since they incorporate

8614-643: The committee was approved in 1969 and would change its name to the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) in 1971. After its inception, the Round Table of Social Responsibilities began to press ALA leadership to address issues such as library unions, working conditions, wages, and intellectual freedom. The Freedom to Read Foundation was founded by Judith Krug , Alexander Allain , and Carrie C Robinson and established by ALA's executive board in 1969. The Black Caucus of

8732-546: The course of artistic, scientific and online government activities. The third five-year phase (InterPARES 3) was initiated in 2007. Its goal is to utilize theoretical and methodological knowledge generated by InterPARES and other preservation research projects for developing guidelines, action plans, and training programs on long-term preservation of authentic records for small and medium-sized archival organizations. Society's heritage has been presented on many different materials, including stone, vellum, bamboo, silk, and paper. Now

8850-459: The current date and time. The benefit of a time stamped file name is that it facilitates searching files by date, given that file managers usually feature file searching by name. In addition, files from different devices can be merged in one folder without file naming conflicts. Numbered file names, on the other hand, do not require that the device has a correctly set internal clock. For example, some digital camera users might not bother setting

8968-484: The date of the ALA's founding. Among the 103 librarians in attendance were Justin Winsor ( Boston Public Library and Harvard University ), William Frederick Poole ( Chicago Public Library and Newberry College ), Charles Ammi Cutter ( Boston Athenæum ), Melvil Dewey , Charles Evans ( Indianapolis Public Library ) and Richard Rogers Bowker . Attendees came from as far west as Chicago and from England. The ALA

9086-404: The development of preservation metadata, the assessment of different preservation strategies and informs future work on developing common standards across the preservation community." Whether analog or digital, archives strive to maintain records as trustworthy representations of what was originally received. Authenticity has been defined as ". . . the trustworthiness of a record as a record; i.e.,

9204-488: The digital object, but on the hard- and software environment in which the object is rendered. It aims at (re)creating the environment in which the digital object was originally created." Examples are having the ability to replicate or imitate another operating system. Examples include emulating an Atari 2600 on a Windows system or emulating WordPerfect 1.0 on a Macintosh . Emulators may be built for applications, operating systems, or hardware platforms. Emulation has been

9322-448: The drives of one array with those of another. Archival appraisal (or, alternatively, selection) refers to the process of identifying records and other materials to be preserved by determining their permanent value. Several factors are usually considered when making this decision. It is a difficult and critical process because the remaining selected records will shape researchers' understanding of that body of records, or fonds . Appraisal

9440-405: The elements used to describe an object are facilitated by the use of a metadata schema. Extensive descriptive metadata about a digital object helps to minimize the risks of a digital object becoming inaccessible. Another common type of file identification is the filename . Implementing a file naming protocol is essential to maintaining consistency and efficient discovery and retrieval of objects in

9558-474: The encoding used for a filename as part of the extended file information. This forced costly filename encoding guessing with each file access. A solution was to adopt Unicode as the encoding for filenames. In the classic Mac OS, however, encoding of the filename was stored with the filename attributes. The Unicode standard solves the encoding determination issue. Nonetheless, some limited interoperability issues remain, such as normalization (equivalence), or

9676-480: The entire name. Many Windows applications are limited to a MAX_PATH value of 260, but Windows file names can easily exceed this limit. From Windows 10, version 1607 , MAX_PATH limitations have been removed. Filenames in some file systems, such as FAT and the ODS-1 and ODS-2 levels of Files-11 , are composed of two parts: a base name or stem and an extension or suffix used by some applications to indicate

9794-670: The exact capitalization by which it is named. On a case-insensitive, case-preserving file system, on the other hand, only one of "MyName.Txt", "myname.txt" and "Myname.TXT" can be the name of a file in a given directory at a given time, and a file with one of these names can be referenced by any capitalization of the name. From its original inception, the file systems on Unix and its derivative systems were case-sensitive and case-preserving. However, not all file systems on those systems are case-sensitive; by default, HFS+ and APFS in macOS are case-insensitive but case-preserving, and SMB servers usually provide case-insensitive behavior (even when

9912-519: The field of digital preservation that helped set out key concepts, requirements, and challenges. The Task Force proposed development of a national system of digital archives that would take responsibility for long-term storage and access to digital information; introduced the concept of trusted digital repositories and defined their roles and responsibilities; identified five features of digital information integrity (content, fixity, reference, provenance, and context) that were subsequently incorporated into

10030-633: The file including additional information. The original File Allocation Table (FAT) file system, used by Standalone Disk BASIC-80 , had a 6.3 file name, with a maximum of 6 bytes in the name and a maximum of 3 bytes in the extension. The FAT12 and FAT16 file systems in IBM PC DOS / MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows prior to Windows 95 used the same 8.3 convention as the CP/M file system. The FAT file systems supported 8-bit characters, allowing them to support non-ASCII characters in file names, and stored

10148-656: The file system) include: The components required to identify a file by utilities and applications varies across operating systems, as does the syntax and format for a valid filename. The characters allowed in filenames depend on the file system. The letters A–Z and digits 0–9 are allowed by most file systems; many file systems support additional characters, such as the letters a–z, special characters, and other printable characters such as accented letters, symbols in non-Roman alphabets, and symbols in non-alphabetic scripts. Some file systems allow even unprintable characters, including Bell , Null , Return and Linefeed , to be part of

10266-535: The file. Some people use the term filename when referring to a complete specification of device, subdirectories and filename such as the Windows C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Chess\Chess.exe . The filename in this case is Chess.exe . Some utilities have settings to suppress the extension as with MS Windows Explorer. During the 1970s, some mainframe and minicomputers had operating systems where files on

10384-421: The format of the data. Refreshing will likely always be necessary due to the deterioration of physical media. Migration is the transferring of data to newer system environments (Garrett et al., 1996). This may include conversion of resources from one file format to another (e.g., conversion of Microsoft Word to PDF or OpenDocument ) or from one operating system to another (e.g., Windows to Linux ) so

10502-400: The format that they feel has the greatest potential for long-term preservation of the content. The Library of Congress has created a set of recommended formats for long-term preservation. They would be used, for example, if the Library was offered items for copyright deposit directly from a publisher. In digital preservation and collection management , discovery and identification of objects

10620-454: The introduction of VFAT , store filenames as upper-case regardless of the letter case used to create them. For example, a file created with the name "MyName.Txt" or "myname.txt" would be stored with the filename "MYNAME.TXT" (VFAT preserves the letter case). Any variation of upper and lower case can be used to refer to the same file. These kinds of file systems are called case-insensitive and are not case-preserving . Some filesystems prohibit

10738-422: The key strategic challenges to such programs is the fact that, while they require significant current and ongoing funding, their benefits accrue largely to future generations. The various levels of security may be represented as three layers: the "hot" (accessible online repositories ) and "warm" (e.g. Internet Archive ) layers both have the weakness of being founded upon electronics - both would be wiped out in

10856-459: The longevity of digital information. Unlike traditional, temporary strategies, and more permanent solutions, digital sustainability implies a more active and continuous process. Digital sustainability concentrates less on the solution and technology and more on building an infrastructure and approach that is flexible with an emphasis on interoperability , continued maintenance and continuous development. Digital sustainability incorporates activities in

10974-419: The loss of digital information. Refreshing is the transfer of data between two types of the same storage medium so there are no bitrot changes or alteration of data. For example, transferring census data from an old preservation CD to a new one. This strategy may need to be combined with migration when the software or hardware required to read the data is no longer available or is unable to understand

11092-401: The meaning of the records has not been altered while in the archives' custody. Digital preservation efforts are largely to enable decision-making in the future. Should an archive or library choose a particular strategy to enact, the content and associated metadata must persist to allow for actions to be taken or not taken at the discretion of the controlling party. Preservation metadata is

11210-415: The new Unicode encoding. Mac OS X 10.3 marked Apple's adoption of Unicode 3.2 character decomposition, superseding the Unicode 2.1 decomposition used previously. This change caused problems for developers writing software for Mac OS X. Within a single directory, filenames must be unique. Since the filename syntax also applies for directories, it is not possible to create a file and directory entries with

11328-838: The other filename's file. Some filesystems restrict the length of filenames. In some cases, these lengths apply to the entire file name, as in 44 characters in IBM z/OS . In other cases, the length limits may apply to particular portions of the filename, such as the name of a file in a directory, or a directory name. For example, 9 (e.g., 8-bit FAT in Standalone Disk BASIC ), 11 (e.g. FAT12 , FAT16 , FAT32 in DOS), 14 (e.g. early Unix), 21 ( Human68K ), 31, 30 (e.g. Apple DOS 3.2 and 3.3), 15 (e.g. Apple ProDOS ), 44 (e.g. IBM S/370), or 255 (e.g. early Berkeley Unix) characters or bytes. Length limits often result from assigning fixed space in

11446-860: The present that will facilitate access and availability in the future. The ongoing maintenance necessary to digital preservation is analogous to the successful, centuries-old, community upkeep of the Uffington White Horse (according to Stuart M. Shieber ) or the Ise Grand Shrine (according to Jeffrey Schnapp ). Renderability refers to the continued ability to use and access a digital object while maintaining its inherent significant properties. Physical media obsolescence can occur when access to digital content requires external dependencies that are no longer manufactured, maintained, or supported. External dependencies can refer to hardware, software, or physical carriers. For example, DLT tape

11564-458: The project began in 1999 with the first phase, InterPARES 1, which ran to 2001 and focused on establishing requirements for authenticity of inactive records generated and maintained in large databases and document management systems created by government agencies. InterPARES 2 (2002–2007) concentrated on issues of reliability, accuracy and authenticity of records throughout their whole life cycle, and examined records produced in dynamic environments in

11682-536: The project, "Libraries and the Learning Society." Librarians examined how public libraries, academic libraries, library and information science training institutions, and school library media centers could best respond to A Nation at Risk. In June 1990, the ALA approved "Policy on Library Services to the Poor" and in 1996 the Task Force on Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty was formed to resurrect and promote

11800-432: The quality of a record that is what it purports to be and that is free from tampering or corruption". Authenticity should not be confused with accuracy; an inaccurate record may be acquired by an archives and have its authenticity preserved. The content and meaning of that inaccurate record will remain unchanged. A combination of policies, security procedures, and documentation can be used to ensure and provide evidence that

11918-474: The records are being processed. Appraisal is performed on all archival materials, not just digital. It has been proposed that, in the digital context, it might be desirable to retain more records than have traditionally been retained after appraisal of analog records, primarily due to a combination of the declining cost of storage and the availability of sophisticated discovery tools which will allow researchers to find value in records of low information density. In

12036-495: The relatively short lifespan of digital media. Widely used hard drives can become unusable in a few years due to a variety of reasons such as damaged spindle motors, and flash memory (found on SSDs , phones, USB flash drives , and in memory cards such as SD, microSD, and CompactFlash cards) can start to lose data around a year after its last use, depending on its storage temperature and how much data has been written to it during its lifetime. Currently, archival disc -based media

12154-482: The repository. Paths are only normalized for the purpose of comparisons. Nonetheless, some communities have patented this strategy, forbidding its use by other communities. To limit interoperability issues, some ideas described by Sun are to: Those considerations create a limitation not allowing a switch to a future encoding different from UTF-8. One issue was migration to Unicode. For this purpose, several software companies provided software for migrating filenames to

12272-485: The resource remains fully accessible and functional. Two significant problems face migration as a plausible method of digital preservation in the long terms. Due to the fact that digital objects are subject to a state of near continuous change, migration may cause problems in relation to authenticity and migration has proven to be time-consuming and expensive for "large collections of heterogeneous objects, which would need constant monitoring and intervention. Migration can be

12390-558: The same character set for composing a filename. Before Unicode became a de facto standard, file systems mostly used a locale-dependent character set. By contrast, some new systems permit a filename to be composed of almost any character of the Unicode repertoire, and even some non-Unicode byte sequences. Limitations may be imposed by the file system, operating system, application, or requirements for interoperability with other systems. Many file system utilities prohibit control characters from appearing in filenames. In Unix-like file systems,

12508-585: The same name in a single directory. Multiple files in different directories may have the same name. Uniqueness approach may differ both on the case sensitivity and on the Unicode normalization form such as NFC, NFD. This means two separate files might be created with the same text filename and a different byte implementation of the filename, such as L"\x00C0.txt" (UTF-16, NFC) (Latin capital A with grave) and L"\x0041\x0300.txt" (UTF-16, NFD) (Latin capital A, grave combining). Some filesystems, such as FAT prior to

12626-410: The size and scope of a given collection. However, filenames are not good for semantic identification, because they are non-permanent labels for a specific location on a system and can be modified without affecting the bit-level profile of a digital file. The cornerstone of digital preservation, " data integrity " refers to the assurance that the data is "complete and unaltered in all essential respects";

12744-505: The system were identified by a user name, or account number. For example, on the TOPS-10 and RSTS/E operating systems from Digital Equipment Corporation , files were identified by On the OS/VS1 , MVS , and OS/390 operating systems from IBM , a file name was up to 44 characters, consisting of upper case letters, digits, and the period. A file name must start with a letter or number,

12862-439: The underlying file system is case-sensitive, e.g. Samba on most Unix-like systems), and SMB client file systems provide case-insensitive behavior. File system case sensitivity is a considerable challenge for software such as Samba and Wine , which must interoperate efficiently with both systems that treat uppercase and lowercase files as different and with systems that treat them the same. File systems have not always provided

12980-405: The use of any encoding, and thus allowed the representation of any local text on any local system, it caused many interoperability issues. A filename could be stored using different byte strings in distinct systems within a single country, such as if one used Japanese Shift JIS encoding and another Japanese EUC encoding. Conversion was not possible as most systems did not expose a description of

13098-413: The use of lower case letters in filenames altogether. Some file systems store filenames in the form that they were originally created; these are referred to as case-retentive or case-preserving . Such a file system can be case-sensitive or case-insensitive . If case-sensitive, then "MyName.Txt" and "myname.txt" may refer to two different files in the same directory, and each file must be referenced by

13216-444: The user has unmediated access to the content, a digital object always needs a software environment to render it. These environments keep evolving and changing at a rapid pace, threatening the continuity of access to the content. Physical storage media, data formats, hardware, and software all become obsolete over time, posing significant threats to the survival of the content. This process can be referred to as digital obsolescence . In

13334-413: The values and core competencies of the profession and on strategies for action to address common issues and concerns. At the beginning of the century The Congress on Professional Education recommended that the Association develop a set of Core Values. In 2007, Loriene Roy was elected as the first Native American President of the ALA. In 2009, Camila Alire became the first Hispanic president of

13452-523: Was chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts . Its headquarters office is in Chicago . Another important founder was Frederick Leypoldt , publisher of Library Journal , who published the conference proceedings. Justin Winsor was the first president of the ALA, serving from 1876 until 1885. Many early presidents were also officers in the Bibliographical Society of America. See List of presidents of

13570-493: Was founded as part of this effort. In the 1930s, library activists pressured the American Library Association to be more responsive to issues such as peace, segregation, library unions, and intellectual freedom. In 1931, the Junior Members Round Table (JMRT) was formed to provide a voice for the younger members of the ALA. The first Library Bill of Rights (LBR) was drafted by Forrest Spaulding to set

13688-616: Was inaugurated in July 2024. Her presidential theme is “A Good Way for ALA.” Standards for Library Services for the Incarcerated or Detained was published in 2024. The ALA Archives, including historical documents, non-current records, and digital records, are held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archives. The establishment of the archives and the roles of David Horace Clift , Robert Wedgeworth , Beta Phi Mu , and

13806-443: Was published by ALA in 2023. It is a comprehensive overview of the current state and operations of the relationships and roles of stakeholders including authors, agents, publishers, distributors, the library community, governments, and trade organizations. In 2024, in response to proposed Georgia legislation that would prohibit public expenditures on the ALA, the ALA responded that the legislation "is based on false narratives", and

13924-1000: Was used for backups and data preservation, but is no longer used. File format obsolescence can occur when adoption of new encoding formats supersedes use of existing formats, or when associated presentation tools are no longer readily available. While the use of file formats will vary among archival institutions given their capabilities, there is documented acceptance among the field that chosen file formats should be "open, standard, non-proprietary, and well-established" to enable long-term archival use. Factors that should enter consideration when selecting sustainable file formats include disclosure, adoption, transparency, self-documentation, external dependencies, impact of patents, and technical protection mechanisms. Other considerations for selecting sustainable file formats include "format longevity and maturity, adaptation in relevant professional communities, incorporated information standards, and long-term accessibility of any required viewing software". For example,

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