Why did "Марія" turn into "Ìàð³ÿ"? An introduction to Cyrillic text encodings

Have you ever tried to open an old computer file or looked something up on the "Wayback Machine", but instead of the legible Cyrillic that you were expecting, you saw something like "Äîñòîéíèé ³ øàíîâíèé Ïåòðå Ïåòðîâè÷ó"?

That computer file may in fact be perfectly preserved, but because of changing standards it has now become illegible and useless. Unlike the paper records, digital materials can suffer from obsolescence, and measures have to be taken to prevent their information content from being lost.

In this webinar, UHEC Archivist Michael Andrec will give a very short introduction to the preservation of historical digital records, explain what text encodings are and how they work, and how to convert that gibberish into something readable.

In some ways, this is the 21st century digital version of the "difficult handwriting" talk he gave in March 2021.

His talk will assume no previous familiarity with the topic and will try to make what can be a confusing and overwhelming subject understandable to the non-specialist.