Veridian’s Diary: Papers Past article from 1912 predicting climate change goes viral - again! Knowledge Base: How we use BagIt as part of our data preservation process
Hello friend of Veridian,
Welcome back for 2023! We look forward to keeping you informed on the latest happenings with Veridian and the wider world of digitised newspaper collections. For our first newsletter for the year, we share how an article from the National Library of New Zealand’s (NLNZ) Papers Past collection has achieved something not often seen in the digital newspaper collection world; it has gone viral. Plus, we explain how we use BagIt, a hierarchical file packaging format, as part of our data preservation process.
Papers Past article from 1912 predicting climate change goes viral - again!
An article from the NLNZ’s multilingual Papers Past collection, titled ‘Coal consumption affecting climate,’ has gone viral, likely for its straightforward prediction of Earth’s warming temperatures. What’s more, this article
from the August 14, 1912 edition of the Rodney & Otamatea Times has achieved widespread reach (in the millions) on numerous occasions, going viral in 2016, 2018 and 2021, with the latest sharing spike coming on its 110th birthday last year.
While we can only speculate as to why exactly it has grabbed the cultural zeitgeist, when many others predicted climate change even earlier than 1912, we (in conjunction with our friends at NLNZ) are also proud that the New Zealand journalist covering the story calls Papers Past New Zealand’s best website. Considering there are over 750,000 .co.nz domains registered, we consider that high praise!
How we use BagIt as part of our data preservation process
BagIt is a hierarchical file packaging format that has been designed to maintain data integrity and completeness when digital content is stored on disks and transferred over networks. For example, if a batch of METS/ALTO data is added to a BagIt bag, BagIt can help preserve and provide assurance of data accuracy, completeness and consistency for this batch of data over its life-cycle.
A BagIt 'bag' is a digital container for storing or sending digital content, in much the same way a cardboard box is a physical container that can be used for storing or sending physical items.
BagIt is used as a standard format for transferring digital content between different organisations, such as archives, libraries and museums. It provides a convenient and reliable way to package and transfer digital content, while ensuring that the content and its associated metadata remain intact and complete during the transfer process.
In our latest Knowledge Base article, we discuss why we use BagIt at Veridian, some examples of its usage and how a BagIt bag is structured.
