The 2005 Digital Preservation Award

The 2005 Digital preservation Award was won by the PREMIS Working Group for their work on preservation metadata.

The Digital Preservation Coalition sponsors the Digital Preservation Award under the banner of the Conservation Awards, which are supported by Sir Paul McCartney and managed in partnership by key organisations in conservation, restoration and preservation management: the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the UK Institute for Conservation (UKIC), English Heritage, the Institute of Paper Conservation (IPC) and the National Preservation Office. UKIC and IPC are in the process of merging with other organisations during 2005 into a new larger professional body for conservation of the cultural heritage, the Institute of Conservation. The Anna Plowden Trust sponsors the Award for Research and Innovation in Conservation.

The winners of the Conservation Awards were announced at the British Museum on 22 November 2005.

• Press Releases for the 2005 Digital Preservation Award
• 2005 Judging Panel
• 2005 Shortlist
• 2005 Award Ceremony

For more information about all the Conservation Award winners and event please go to Conservation Awards Website [external]

The 2005 Awards Ceremony

The winner of the 2005 Digital Preservation Award was announced by Loyd Grossman at the British Museum on 22^nd November 2005. The PREMIS Working Group - a team of 30 experts from five countries - was awarded the prestigious Digital Preservation Award at the Conservation Awards ceremony.

Loyd Grossman present the winning prize to Brian Lavoie and Rebecca Guenther, representing the PREMIS team


DPC chair Lynne Brindley


The DP Award shortlisted project teams


All the winners for the Conservation Awards


Conservation winners, judges and organisers

For more information about all the Conservation Award winners and event please go to Conservation Awards Website

2005 Digital Preservation Award Judging Panel

All the shortlisted projects will give a presentation to the Digital Preservation Awards judges in September. The members of the 2005 judging panel are:

• Richard Boulderstone (Chair of the Judging Panel), Director, e-Strategy, British Library
• Sheila Anderson, Director, Arts and Humanities Data Service
• Kevin Ashley, Head of the Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre
• David Dawson, Head of the Digital Futures Team, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
• Hans Jansen, Head of Research & Development Division, National Library of the Netherlands
• Maggie Jones, Executive Secretary, Digital Preservation Coalition (sponsor of the Digital Preservation Award)
• Chris Rusbridge, Director, Digital Curation Centre
• David Seaman, Executive Director, Digital Library Federation

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)

The 2007 Digital Preservation Award

The 2007 Digital Preservation Award was won by The National Archives for the PRONOM and DROID projects.

The Digital Preservation Coalition sponsors the Digital Preservation Award under the banner of the Conservation Awards, which are supported by Sir Paul McCartney and managed in partnership by key organisations in conservation, restoration and preservation management:

• 2007 Award Ceremony
• Press Release: Winner Announced
• 2007 Shortlist
• 2007 Judging Panel

For more information please go to The Conservation Awards 2007: the Digital Preservation Award [external] on the Conservation Awards website. The Conservation Awards are supported by

• Icon, the Institute of Conservation [external]
• The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) [external]
• English Heritage [external]
• The National Preservation Office [external]
• The Anna Plowden Trust [external] sponsors the Award for Research and Innovation in Conservation.

2007 Digital Preservation Award Judging Panel

All the short listed projects will give a presentation to the Digital Preservation Awards judges in June. The members of the 2007 judging panel are:

	Kevin Ashley, Chair of the Judges Head of Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre. For the past ten years, Kevin's group has worked on the preservation of digital resources on behalf of other organisations. Kevin represents ULCC on the board of the Digital Preservation Coalition, was a member of the Advisory Council for Erpanet and is part of the RLG-NARA task force seeking to develop an audit and certification mechanism for trusted digital repositories. He speaks frequently on matters related to digital preservation and management of digital content and has contributed to training through the Society of Archivists and the DPC, as well as other organisations.
	Michael Day Research Officer at UKOLN, University of Bath. UKOLN (www.ukoln.ac.uk) is a centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. Michael joined UKOLN's research and development team in 1996 and has worked on a range of externally funded research projects, mostly related to metadata issues, interoperability and digital preservation. He is currently part of the distributed research team of the Digital Curation Centre (www.dcc.ac.uk), whose overall mission is to achieve continued quality improvement in data curation and digital curation. He is also a participant in the digital preservation research cluster of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries (www.dpc.delos.info).
	Helen Hockx-Yu Helen is a programme manager at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), responsible for the programme area Digital Preservation. She currently oversees the Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme (Circular 4/04), the Digital Curation Centre, the UK LOCKSS Pilot Programme and all the digital preservation related projects funded under the Repositories and Preservation Capital Programme. Helen was on the steering committee for the UK Preservation Needs Assessment study and acted as a member of the Digital Preservation and Curation Working Group, formed by a DTI-led steering group in October 2005 to develop strategy and funding requirements for information e-infrastructure and inform the 2007 comprehensive spending review.
	William Kilbride William is Research Manager at Glasgow Museums. As assistant director of the Archaeology Data Service, he was involved in a large number of digital preservation activities. He was on the steering committee for the UK Needs Assessment and tutor to the Digital Preservation Training Programme, and has contributed to numerous workshops, guides and advice papers on the topic. William has recently returned to Glasgow as Research Manager within the Major Projects department of Glasgow Museums. With one of the largest civic museum collections in Europe, Glasgow has recently embarked on major capital projects to transform access to its collections. Digital preservation and access are integral to these projects.
	Andreas Rauber Associate Professor at the Department of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (IFS) at the Vienna University of Technology. He is head of the iSpaces research group at the eCommerce Competence. In 2001 he joined the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) in Pisa as an ERCIM Research Fellow, followed by an ERCIM Research position at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA), at Rocquencourt, France, in 2002. Professor Rauber serves on the board of the IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries (TCDL), and is actively involved in several research projects in the field of Digital Libraries, focusing on the organization and exploration of large information spaces, as well as Web archiving and digital preservation.
	Chris Rusbridge Director of the Digital Curation Centre, whose overall mission is continuing quality improvement in data curation & digital preservation. Chris was previously Director of the Information Services at the University of Glasgow, active in the area of digital preservation, and before that he was Programme Director of the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme, where he was closely involved in many digital preservation activities including the CEDARS and CAMiLEON projects.
	Helen Shenton Helen became the first Head of Collection Care at the British Library in 2002, with increasing responsibility for digital preservation alongside conservation and collection storage and security. She is a founding Board member of the DPC and chairs the the NPO's Preservation Administrators' Panel. She sits on a number of national and international groups, including IFLA's Preservation and Conservation Committee and the Academic Advisory Committee of the Centre for Sustainable Heritage at UCL. Helen has taught and examined Master's degree courses in Conservation and Preservation, and has lectured and published widely in areas such as national preservation strategies, life-cycle collection management and digital preservation.
	Dave Thompson Dave is the Digital Curator, Wellcome Library. Dave has worked in libraries in both the UK and in New Zealand. Before coming to the Wellcome Library he worked for the National Library of New Zealand on national digital preservation strategies. He is now working on bringing born-digital archival materials into the Wellcome Library. He also leads the Library's contribution to the UK Web Archiving Consortium, archiving web-based material. As well as practical archiving, this also involves developing strategies for the preservation of web-based materials and the development of the tools for web archiving.

2007 Digital Preservation Award Shortlist

The Digital Preservation Award of £5,000 is sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition. This prestigious Award recognises achievement and encourages innovation in the new and challenging field of digital preservation - simply put, preserving things whose very existence depends on computers.

Short-listed for the Digital Preservation Award are:

1. LIFE: The British Library.
LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) has made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation, an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. Its methodology models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for the next 5, 10 or 100 years. Organisations can apply this process to understand costs and focus resources on those items or collections most in need of them.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/life/1/conference.shtml

2. Web Curator Tool software development project: National Library of New Zealand & The British Library.
The web is a huge and interconnected digital asset with which we are all familiar, and one in which material changes and disappears with frightening regularity. Conscious of this problem, the National Library of New Zealand and The British Library worked together in an international collaboration to build this tool, which supports selective and thematic web-harvesting by collaborating users in a library environment. Swift development over just 10 months enabled it to be released as free software for the benefit of the international web-archiving community in September 2006, from webcurator.sf.net.
http://webcurator.sourceforge.net/

3. Active Preservation at The National Archives - PRONOM Technical Registry and DROID file format identification tool: The National Archives of the UK.
One of the fundamental challenges of digital preservation is to understand the technologies required to access digital information, and plan the actions we will need to take to ensure continued access in the future in the face of constant technological change. Is the software needed to read this document still supported by the supplier, and is the format of this digital movie still readable by most computers? PRONOM is a unique and innovative online service which helps to answer questions like these and includes a knowledge base of technical information about over 600 file formats and 250 software tools, which has been developed by The National Archives to answer these challenges.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/aboutapps/pronom/puid.htm

4. PARADIGM (The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media): Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, & John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester.
Personal archives are important components of cultural memory, but inexperience in curating their modern counterparts - e-mail, digital photographs, online calendars, blogs and many more - puts the survival of today's personal histories at risk. The diversity and volatility of digital technology far exceeds that of any medium that creators, archivists and researchers have previously worked with. The Paradigm project has worked with politicians, archivists and researchers to investigate these challenges in an exemplar project so that the archives of significant contemporaries can continue to enrich our history.
http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/

5. Digital Repository Audit and Certification: CRL, RLG-OCLC, NARA, the DCC, DPE and Nestor.
As the number of organisations, both public and private, preserving digital information increases, it becomes important to be able to assess how well they are doing and how well-prepared they are for the unknown challenges of the future. The Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC) Criteria and Checklist (maintained by the US Center for Research Libraries), the nestor project's Criteria Catalogue and the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) published by the Digital Curation Centre and DigitalPreservationEurope present complementary methods for the self assessment, audit and certification of digital repository infrastructures.
http://www.repositoryaudit.eu/

All the short-listed projects will give a presentation to the Digital Preservation Award judges on 19 June. The winners of the Conservation Awards 2007 will be announced at the British Museum on 27 September.

The 2004 Awards Ceremony

The winner of the 2004 Digital Preservation Award was announced by Loyd Grossman at the British Library on 22^nd June 2004. The National Archives won the award for their Digital Archive. Press release

The DP Award was sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition.

The eight DP Award judges, chaired by Richard Boulderstone, were impressed with the clear aims and practical, achievable goals the National Archives had set in such a rapidly changing environment.

The DP Award judges also decided that there should be a special commendation for the CAMiLEON project, for their development of innovative technical strategies to combat technological obsolescence.

David Ryan, team leader for The National Archives Digital Archive is presented with a cheque for £5,000 by Loyd Grossman for winning the first Digital Preservation Award for the Digital Archive.


Paul Wheatley and Dave Holdsworth, from the University of Leeds, being presented with a Specially Commended certificate by Loyd Grossman for the CAMiLEON project.


L to R, David Thomas (National Archives); Neil Beagrie (JISC); Steve Knight (National Library of New Zealand); Paul Wheatley (CAMiLEON); Sarah Tyacke (National Archives); David Ryan (National Archives); Dave Holdsworth (CAMiLEON); Graham Coe (National Library of New Zealand)

The 2004 Judging Panel

Sheila Anderson is Director, Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). The AHDS is a distributed service and preserves material deposited voluntarily by individuals and research groups within Higher Education, or as a condition of awards granted by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. Some material created outside Higher Education is also actively pursued for deposit by AHDS staff. The AHDS holds electronic texts, databases, still images, moving image, audio, GIS data, Geophysics data (archaeology) metadata sets (catalogues deposited with us, as opposed to our own catalogue). Some of this material represents digital surrogates for still and moving images, and audio recordings, transcriptions of original literary works, transcriptions of original statistical works. Some represents digital resources based on, but not direct surrogates of, non-digital sources, such as collections of information taken from historical documents. Some also represents born digital research papers, reports, field work notes etc.

Kevin Ashley is Head of Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre. For the past ten years, the work of Kevin's group has been primarily involved in the preservation of digital resources on behalf of other organisations. In many cases this has included providing descriptions of those resources and managing access to them. Most of these resources are archival, whether born digital or as digital surrogates, and have involved many types of information (databases, text, video and audio) with different access patterns and cataloguing requirements. Kevin is a Board member of the Digital Preservation Coalition, a member of the Advisory Council for Erpanet and that of the UK Archives Hub. He speaks frequently on matters related to digital preservation and access and management of digital content and has contributed to training through the Society of Archivists and the DPC, as well as other organisations.

Richard Boulderstone (Chair) is Director of e-Strategy, at the British Library. This role involves the management and further development of e and IT strategy throughout the British Library, the implementation of digital media projects and services, and the delivery of e-business methods and tools. Major developments to be led by him include the digitisation of many of the Library's collections as well as the archiving of materials that are 'born digital'. Working in close collaboration with the rest of the British Library's executive team, Mr Boulderstone will ensure the implementation of a fully integrated e-programme across all Directorates - adding the essential e-ingredient to the British Library's strategy to remain relevant and innovative. Prior to this appointment, Richard has held senior positions in a number of international information providers, working both in the UK and US. Between 1984 and 1993 he worked at Knight-Ridder Financial where he was Senior Vice President responsible for Technology. Subsequently he worked at Reed Elsevier plc and Thomson Financial before spending two years as Senior Vice President Engineering at Looksmart Ltd, the world's largest search and web directory business.

David Dawson is the Senior ICT Adviser for the Libraries & Information Society Team of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). David studied Archaeology at Durham University, and completed the Museum Studies Course at Leicester in 1985, and later becoming an Associate of the Museums Association in 1988. His first post in a museum was working on a documentation project, completing cards for the archaeology collections of the Museum of Sussex Archaeology . In 1998 David joined the Museums & Galleries Commission as New Technology Adviser, before becoming Senior ICT Adviser. He managed the DCMS/MLA IT Challenge Fund, and is currently working on a range of other projects and strategic developments. He represents MLA on many different Groups and initiatives including: UK Co-ordinator of the EU Digitising Content Together initiative - an e-Europe action; Expert adviser to the New Opportunities Fund on the nof-digitise programme; Adviser to DCMS on the development of Culture Online. David works with mda and the 24 Hour Museum and is also a member of various committess, including UKOLN Interoperability Focus, Metadata for Education, Archaeology Data Service, HEIRNet. He has contributed to a number of strategic developments, including JISC, Office of e-Envoy Broadband Research Group, TASI, and NAACE.

Barry Fox is an independent journalist and broadcaster. Educated Berkhamstead School and graduated from Exeter College, Oxford (BA and MA Oxon). He has contributed regularly to New Scientist magazine for thirty years, and to numerous specialist, hobbyist and trade weeklies and monthlies including the BBC Music Magazine, Hi Fi News, What Video and Everyday Practical Electronics. Barry is
European Contributing Editor for the US-based Warren group of newsletters, including Consumer Electronics Daily. He broadcasts on national and local radio and TV, commenting on technology news and answering listeners' queries live on air during phone-in programmes. He is the winner of several UK Technology press awards. He has retained his independence as a journalist by adopting a strict policy of never doing any public relations work or commercial consultancy.

Nick Higham presents Factfile several times a day on BBC News 24, offering background information and analysis on the day's major stories. He was formerly the BBC's arts and media correspondent, reporting for BBC news programmes on television and radio. He has presented programmes and documentaries on Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, BBC Two and World Service. He writes a regular column for Marketing Week magazine and another for BBC News Online. He frequently chairs industry conferences and lectures on the media to students and journalists in the UK and abroad (including Bulgaria and Paraguay).

Chris Rusbridge is Director of Information Services at the University of Glasgow, which is active in the area of digital preservation, including being a member of the consortium that successfully bid for the recently created Digital Curation Centre. Chris was previously Programme Director of the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme, where he was closely involved in many digital preservation activities including Cedars and Camileon.

David Saunders is Senior Scientist at the National Gallery, London. After post-doctoral research he joined the National Gallery as a museum scientist. His research interests include the investigation of the effects of the environment on artists' materials, and methods of preventing deterioration to works of art. An interest in the long-term study of colour change and non-destructive analysis of paintings, particularly using imaging techniques, has led to research in high-resolution colour accurate digital imaging for scientific analysis, documentation, printing and publishing. He has been involved in a number of European Community-supported projects (VASARI, MARC VISEUM, ACOHIR, ARTISTE, SCULPTEUR and CRISATEL) in the area of digital imaging of two and three-dimensional works of art. He has been an Editor of Studies in Conservation since 1990, served on the technical committees for the 1994 and 2000 International Institute for Conservation (IIC) congresses and, since 2003 has been Director of Publications for IIC

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.