Confessions of a Mad Librarian

From a press release issued by the NDIIPP:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ANNOUNCES JOINT DIGITAL PRESERVATION PROJECT WITH FOUR UNIVERSITIES

Library to Work with Old Dominion, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Harvard Universities

The Library of Congress has entered into a joint digital preservation project with Old Dominion University, Department of Computer Science; The Johns Hopkins University, Sheridan Libraries; Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources; and Harvard University Library to explore strategies for the ingest and preservation of digital archives. The project is supported by Information Systems Support Inc.

The Archive Ingest and Handling Test (AIHT), is designed to identify, document and disseminate working methods for preserving the nation's increasingly important digital cultural materials, as well as to identify areas that may require further research or development. The AIHT is part of an initiative, led by the Library of Congress, to build a network of preservation partners through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).

The AIHT participants are investigating and applying various digital preservation strategies, using a digital archive donated to the Library by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The archive is a collection of 57,000 digital images, text, audio and video related to the Sept. 11, 2001 events. The transfer of these 12 gigabytes of digital content is being used to emulate the problems that arise in digital preservation and to test possible solutions.

This was covered by Government Computing News and also announced on GOVDOC-L.

Will this affect my once-and-future job in any fashion? Nope.
Will I have anything to do with this when I return to Stanford? Nope.
Am I still excited as all heck about this? Yep!