Celebrate Preservation Week!

Did you know? This week is National Preservation Week. From April 24-30, the Library of Congress and libraries around the nation will provide guidance in preserving digital images and other files.

Thursday, April 28th the Library of Congress is hosting a free webinar at 1pm Central Time titled Preserving Your Personal Digital Memories. Registration is required, and the form is available here.

Digital photos, electronic documents, and other new media are fragile and require special care to keep them useable. But preserving digital information is a new concept that most people have little experience with. As new technologies appear for creating and saving our personal digital information, older ones become obsolete, making it difficult to access older content. Learn about the nature of the problem and hear about some simple, practical tips and tools to help you keep your digital memories safe.

As always, if you have any questions about managing your digital images, please contact the VRC.

Early Twentieth Century Russia, in Color

Between 1909 and 1912, “photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.”

These images are now owned by the Library of Congress, which acquired the glass plates in 1948. Digital reproductions are available online.

Via Boston.com’s Big Picture photography blog.