MDL Regional Meeting - St. Cloud

Hosted in collaboration with the Stearns History Museum, the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) Regional Meeting - St. Cloud will take place on Monday, April 6. This in-person event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. The morning's program will consist of presentations on recent MDL initiatives such as digital storytelling, adding images to Wikimedia, and innovative transcription efforts. After lunch, which is provided, attendees will learn about digital preservation best practices and techniques in an afternoon workshop.

Location

Stearns History Museum
235 33rd Ave S
St Cloud, MN 56301

Program

9:30: Registration
10:00: Welcome
10:15: MDL update on ongoing initiatives and new projects, presented by Greta Bahnemann and Stephanie Hess.
12:00: Lunch
1:00: Building Your Digital Preservation Toolbox, presented by Carol Kussmann and Sara Ring.
3:00: Conclusion

Afternoon Workshop

Building Your Digital Preservation Toolbox: Practical Solutions for Cultural Heritage
Did you know that a digital file can be more fragile than a 50-year-old print photograph? A physical print may fade slowly over decades, but digital content can vanish in an instant due to hardware failure, obsolete software or hardware that prevents access, or data decay. And that's just a few of the risks! Whether you are managing files returned from your Minnesota Digital Library digitization project, handling "born-digital" donations or managing other digital files, active preservation is the best strategy to keep it accessible for future generations to come. 

Join us to learn how to protect and care for your digital files. Presenters will cover:

• How to identify and select what to preserve
• Common risks and basic actions you can take to protect your digital content
• Storage considerations
• How to build a sustainable preservation plan for your organization

Presenters will also demonstrate several digital preservation tools that you can add to your toolkit to help actively manage your digital content. Bring your challenges! There will be dedicated time for questions and small group discussions to share ideas and solutions with colleagues.

About the Minnesota Digital Library Regional Meetings

The Minnesota Digital Library regional meetings are one-day conferences at which MDL participants, partners, and interested professionals gather to learn about the MDL, what the collaborative is currently doing, and to attend sessions on a variety of topics of interest to cultural heritage staff.