2005 Digital Preservation Award Shortlist

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The Digital Preservation Award of £5,000 is sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition. This prestigious Award recognises the many new initiatives being undertaken in the challenging field of digital preservation. The Digital Preservation Award is presented as part of the Conservation Awards, held every eighteen months. The 2005 Conservation Awards will be presented at an event held at the British Museum on 22nd November. The DP Award will be presented by Loyd Grossman. For more information about all the Conservation Award winners and event please go to Conservation Awards Website.

Shortlisted for the 2005 Digital Preservation Award are:

Vienna University of Technology
Choosing the optimal digital preservation strategy

The Vienna University of Technology recognises the difficulty in choosing a long-term preservation strategy, whether the material be digitised or born digital. It has developed a workflow evaluation tool to assist in the selection of an optimal preservation solution (eg. migration, emulation, or computer museum), thus enabling the user to make an informed, well documented and accountable decision for the implementation of a specific strategy for a given collection. Their approach has a wide application and has been successfully applied to video, audio and document records.
Presentation (PDF 211KB)

National Archives of the Netherlands
Digital Preservation Testbed

The Digital Preservation Testbed project, developed by the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands, is a practical research project to investigate options to secure long-term accessibility to archival records. The Archief carried out experiments based on series of solution-oriented research questions, in order to decide which preservation strategy or combination of strategies would be most suitable. The Testbed focused on three different methods for the long-term preservation of digital information, namely migration, XML and emulation. These methods are assessed not only in terms of their effectiveness, but also in terms of their limitations, cost and possibilities for use. From June 2005, the Testbed will operate as the Digital Preservation System of the Nationaal Archief.
Presentation (PDF 411KB)

PREMIS Working Group
PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies)

Sponsored by the OCLC and RLG, PREMIS is an international working group set up to define a core set of preservation metadata elements, applicable to a broad range of digital preservation activities and to identify and evaluate alternative strategies for encoding, storing, managing, and exchanging preservation metadata - in particular, the core metadata elements - within and across digital preservation systems. Its activities culminated in the release of a Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final Report of the PREMIS Working Group (May 2005). The Data Dictionary is a comprehensive guide to core metadata for supporting the long-term preservation of digital materials. PREMIS has made a vital contribution to the development of effective digital preservation solutions by creating and moving forward an international standard for preservation metadata.
Presentation (PDF 161KB)

British Broadcasting Corporation
Reverse Standards Conversion

The recovery of significant early British colour television programmes by the BBC, which were degraded when they were converted to an American TV standard in the late 1960s and early 1970s. An innovative project that overcomes problems dealing with an obsolete video format, resulting in the digital conversion of some 80 programmes to broadcast quality, ensuring their preservation for future generations.
Presentation (PDF 1.7MB)

UK Web Archiving Consortium
The Consortium

Six leading UK institutions, The British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, JISC, the National Archives and the Wellcome Library, have formed the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) to deliver a searchable archive of selected UK websites. This pioneering project addresses the lifecycle of websites from selection, through rights clearance and capture, to access by the public and long-term preservation. The collaborative venture went live at www.webarchive.org.uk on May 9th 2005.
Presentation (PDF 73KB)