Going digital has many meanings, depending on the genre of data and on the type of business involved. For the Library of Congress, this is a pretty big deal. NPR brought this very interesting news to us in their article, “A Long Way From Wax Cylinders, Library Of Congress Slowly Joins The Digital Age.”
The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest cultural institution, established in 1800, and the largest library in the world. It maintains some 160 million items. It has put a quarter of those items online and for some, that isn’t enough.
Preserving is a challenge when technology changes faster than you can keep up. Added to that, Congress has cut the library’s budget by 8 percent over the past five years.
With any digital archiving project, it is important to remember the value of a solid taxonomy. How the content is classified impacts the findability of your data. Professionals should look for an experienced builder of solid standards-based taxonomies to associate content for appropriate machine-assisted indexing. Access Innovations can provide solutions that are ANSI compliant.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
