The SPRUCE Project at the University of Leeds, with the London School of Economics, British Library, Digital Preservation Coalition and the Open Planets Foundation cordially invite you to the first ....

SPRUCE Digital Preservation Mashup, Marriott Hotel, Glasgow, Glasgow G3 8RR 16-18 April 2012

Sustainable PReservation Using Community Engagement (SPRUCE) project has been funded by JISC to inspire, guide, support and enable HE, FE and cultural institutions to address digital preservation gaps; and to use the knowledge gathered from that activity to articulate a compelling business case for digital preservation.  We aim to foster a vibrant and self-supporting community of digital preservation practitioners via a mixture of online interaction and face to face events. To get the ball rolling we are organising a series of free events around the UK (based on the successful AQuA Project mashups see http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/AQuA/Home) that will provide support and technical expertise to address the real digital preservation challenges that institutions face. The best work from event attendees will be awarded funding to develop the activity and embed it within business as usual processes. £60k is available for these awards.

Over 3 days a diverse community will come together to discuss, test, code (don't worry non-techies we won't force you to code), plan, and share challenges related to the new types of content entrusted to libraries, archives, and museums to preserve and manage.  The focus is around community, communication, and learning from one another for we definitely can't go it alone in the new landscape of digital content.  The result will be practical digital preservation tools which meet your specific needs and which are likely to be useful more widely. 

Who should come

Anyone interested in digital collections in an archive, library, museum, data centre, repository or any other sensible context.  If you're worried about how your collections will survive the next shift in technology, or you have some idea how you can do that, then we'd love to know.  We are looking for teachers, learners, researchers, archivists, curators, librarians, open source developers, digitizers, collection managers, repository staff, conservators and creators: basically people with a can do attitude willing to try out new tools and techniques to manage digital collections and content, and who are interested in making sure that this content is available tomorrow.  Although the funding comes from higher education we know that we benefit from solutions and ideas from across the public and private sector.  So, as long as you are willing to share and get involved, and so long as you are interested in the long term prospects for your data then we'd love to meet you. 

We're going to run events in the south later in the year, so for this event we want to encourage participation from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northern England.

What do you mean a 'mashup'?

A mashup is an event that brings together people with different skills.  Participation during SPRUCE event is mandatory. Observers are not allowed! But attending an event will give you the opportunity to get hands on with managing digital content, identifying concrete challenges and solving them. All inside three days flat! Our expert facilitators will be on hand to help your through the event, as will your fellow attendees who you'll be working with.
 
At a SPRUCE mashup you must play one of two roles:

• Practitioner: Bring with you a sample of one of your digital collections which you will champion throughout the event. We will pair you up with a technical expert who will help to solve your challenges.
• Techie: Working alongside our experts and fellow techies, you'll have the chance to work on and solve some practical challenges, hone your technical skills, learn about lots of new toolsets, and discover extreme agile development!"

Registration is closed. A write up of this event is now available by attendee Rebecca Nielsen:

http://futurearchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/spruce-mashup-16th-18th-april-2012.html

Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for all queries about this event.

Draft programme

Please note: all attendees must be present for all sessions!

What you need to know before you arrive ...

Here is a quick checklist of preparation items to consider before joining us for a SPRUCE mashup event. Participation in mashup activities is mandatory: observers are not allowed!

1. Participation during mashup activities is mandatory: observers are not allowed! So it's important to consider what role you would like to play at the event. There are 2 options, and its worth noting that you can wear more than one hat if so desired:
   1. Collection owner: you will bring with you a digital collection sample and champion it throughout the event. We will team you up with other experts to develop solutions for your content
   2. Techie: you will come armed with your best coding, scripting and command line skills and will be teamed up with collection owners who need your help
2. If you are playing the part of a collection owner, you will need to bring with you a collection sample:
   1. Samples should ideally be between 10 and 10000 items
   2. Any variety of digital collection is of interest
   3. If you are aware of particular quality, management or sustainability issues that are worrying you, that will be a useful start but is not essential
   4. If you bring broken/imperfect content, make sure you bring some non-broken examples as well
   5. Bring your content on an external hard drive or memory stick to the event
   6. Prepare a 2 minute lightning talk on your collection, describing its key characteristics and highlighting any challenges you are interested in. We will explore, define and articulate some of these issues more deeply during the SPRUCE events
   7. If *possible*, clear any IPR issues for your sample and we will make it available via the OPF website so that tool developers have test data they can work with. This is really useful!
3. AQuA results will be captured on the Open Planets Foundation git repository and wiki. If you want you can sign up for these in advance.
4. Remember to bring your laptop! You must have one for the event!
5. Dress code: casual. We're all friends here

For all queries and questions regarding this event please contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it