Digital Preservation Award Shortlist

The Digital Preservation Coalition was delighted to receive nine strong applications for the 2004 Digital Preservation Award. The deadline for applications was 30th September 2003.

The Screening Panel selected five applications for the shortlist. These applicants will now be asked to provide further details for the Digital Preservation Award judges and will also be asked to prepare a presentation for them. The successful applicant will be announced at an Awards Event held at the British Library on 22nd June 2004. Further details will be announced shortly.

The shortlisted applications are listed here (in alphabetical order by title of project) with brief details from their applications:

The new Award sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be included for the first time in this years Pilgrim Trust Conservation Awards.

The CAMiLEON Project

Bringing together expertise from the University of Leeds (funded by JISC) and the University of Michigan (funded by NSF), the CAMiLEON Project (Creative Archiving at Michigan and Leeds Emulating the Old on the New) developed practical techniques for the use of Emulation in the digital preservation world. These techniques were put into practice with demonstrator developments, in particular a rescue of the BBC Domesday Project using emulation.

The Digital Archive

The National Archives has created the first ever digital archive of electronic Government documents to ensure that records of modern government are preserved securely for future generations. Capable of storing over 100 terabytes of data - equal to 1.5 billion pages of text - the archive also stores sound and graphics files, virtual reality models and even video footage. The archive currently holds records from high profile public enquiries, departmental websites, and the records of parliamentary committees and royal commissions. The Digital Archive is available free of charge in the in public reading rooms at Kew and on The National Archives' Network. A large scale Internet presentation system is in development, to allow access to readers around the world from 2005.

JISC Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy

As a committee of the UK Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, the JISC serves some 200 Higher Education Institutions and 400 Further Education Institutions across the UK and its work therefore has a very wide impact both nationally and internationally.The Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) 2002-5 sets out the case for investment by the sector in digital preservation and the principles and priorities for JISC funded activities and external partnerships to be followed over a three year period.

Preservation Metadata Extraction Tool

Preservation metadata is an essential component of a digital preservation programme. The National Library of New Zealand has commissioned development of a software tool to programmatically extract preservation metadata from the headers of a range of file formats.

The preservation metadata extract tool:

• automatically extracts preservation-related metadata from digital files; and
• outputs that metadata in a standard format (XML) for uploading into a preservation metadata repository.

Wellcome Library/JISC Web Archiving Project

Perceiving the gap in web archiving activity in Britain, (although aware of initiatives in the USA, Australia, Scandinavia and elsewhere), the Wellcome Library and JISC initiated a project to commission a feasibility study into needs and opportunities for their respective communities. Recognising also that any long-term solution is likely to depend on distributed responsibilities, the project has been developed as a partnership between Wellcome and JISC, with funding split evenly between the two.