AMIA Pathways Fellowship - Introduction to Digital Preservation
June 26, 2026 + July 10, 2026
Week 1: DigiPres Introduction + Obsolete File Preservation Exercise
Week 1 Topics \\ Digital Preservation Introduction
Analog and Digital Signals
- synth demo: analog pitch > digital/quantized pitch 🎛️
Obsolete File Preservation Exercise
Introduction to Digital Preservation Standards
Week 1 Resources \\
Infinite Mac Emulator
https://infinitemac.org/Hex Editor Webapp
https://hexed.it/NDSA Levels of Preservation
https://www.ndsa.org/publications/levels-of-digital-preservation/The OAIS Reference Model
http://www.oais.info/PREMIS: Preservation Metadata Implementation Strategies
https://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/
Week 2: Preservation Packaging
Week 2 Topics \\ Preservation Packaging
Early Digital Preservation History
Repository Management - OAIS
Collection Packaging
Week 2 Resources \\
Early Digital Preservation History
1993: Lynch – Accessibility and Integrity of Networked Information Collections
2019: Baucom – A Brief History of Digital Preservation
Preservation Packaging and OAIS
2014: Lavoie – Meeting the Challenges of Digital Preservation: The OAIS Reference Model
2003: CCSDS – Reference Model for Open Archival Information Systems, “Magenta Book”
What is a Library?
Computing + Debugging…
Actual bug found by Grace Hopper
Julia Evans: Debugging
https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/12/08/a-debugging-manifesto
“When you run into a bug, the natural instinct is to try to fix it as fast as possible…”
“But in my day to day debugging, I find that it’s generally more effective (and faster!) to leave the bug in place, figure out exactly what’s gone wrong, and then fix it after I’ve understood what happened.”