Second Digital Preservation Award 2005

Press Release Number Two - November 22nd 2005

International team wins the 2005 Digital Preservation Award

The PREMIS Working Group - a team of 30 experts from five countries - was awarded the prestigious Digital Preservation Award for 2005 tonight by Loyd Grossman OBE FSA at the Conservation Awards ceremony held at the British Museum.

This is the tenth anniversary of the Conservation Awards, which this year has a new sponsor - Sir Paul McCartney. This is the second year to include the DPC-sponsored £5,000 Digital Preservation Award, which was awarded to the PREMIS Working Group for "leadership and advancement in digital preservation which will benefit the UK"

The winning team's work is to do with "preservation meta-data", which is essential to ensure that digital objects remain accessible over time. . The work of the PREMIS Working Group goes a long way towards establishing an international open-source standard for handling meta-data, which will help libraries and institutions around the world to archive digital content - the volume of which is doubling every year.

The PREMIS team were chosen ahead of four other shortlisted projects, including overseas entries from the Vienna University of Technology and the National Archive of the Netherlands. Two UK entries also made the shortlist: a team from the BBC for their work rescuing and restoring early colour programming (including unseen episodes of Dr WHO); and the UK Web Archiving Consortium, a group lead by the British Library, which is creating a searchable archive of selected UK websites.

The judges were impressed by the work PREMIS has done in compiling a "data dictionary" identifying core digital preservation metadata, which they have supported with practical examples and a software protocol. A key factor in the decision was the international scope of PREMIS, and the consensus building and collaboration that is so crucial in so many digital preservation issues.

Richard Boulderstone, Chair of the Judging Panel, said: "The DPC is delighted to again have had a very strong shortlist for their annual Award, with entries from both the UK and overseas. This demonstrates an increasing awareness of digital preservation and the need to find workable solutions."

In his original presentation to the judging panel, Brian Lavoie of the PREMIS Working group said: "This work illustrates a gradual shift from articulating the problem to solving it ... it's not so much 'Why is digital preservation important?' anymore; rather, 'What must be done to achieve preservation objectives?'."

Preservation metadata was crucial to implementing reliable, sustainable digital preservation programs, he said. "The issues of long term storage of digital resources are unique to the digital space. A digital object needs to be supported, wrapped in this metadata so it can be kept."

TV presenter and culinary entrepreneur Loyd Grossman, who helped to launch the DPC in 2002, presented the award. "It's reassuring to see how much things have progressed since we started, but it is still daunting to realise how much still needs to be done," he said. "History will judge us very harshly if we are unable to overcome the obstacles to preserving access to our burgeoning digital cultural heritage so we need to encourage and reward those who are working to secure it."

Notes to editors:

Digital Preservation Coalition is a cross-sectoral membership organisation of 27 major UK organisations, which aims to ensure that digital preservation is kept on the policy agenda and practical progress in preserving access to important digital resources is made. It was launched in February 2002. Information about its work can be found at http://www.dpconline.org.

Preservation metadata is sometimes referred to as the glue that binds everything together. Without it, effective long-term digital preservation is not possible and the search is on for cost-effective strategies to implement it in a standardised way. The PREMIS Working Group have compiled a data dictionary, which identifies core digital preservation metadata, supported by practical examples and an XML schema to enable more efficient transfer of metadata between different organisations.

Brian Lavoie is Senior Research Scientist, Office of Research, OCLC. Founded in 1967, the Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 53,548 libraries in 96 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials.

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 2005 judging panel were:

• 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

For further information about the DPC and the Digital Preservation Award contact Anna Arthur at AnnaLeone PR on 020 7637 2994

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

Press Release Number One - July 12th 2005

The 2005 Conservation Awards - Digital Preservation Award Shortlist Announcement Today

London, 12 July 2005 - 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. Shortlisted for the Digital Preservation Award are:

• Choosing the optimal digital preservation strategy
  Applicant: Vienna University of Technology
  
  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.

• Digital Preservation Testbed
  Applicant: National Archives of the Netherlands
  
  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.

• PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies)
  Applicant: PREMIS Working Group
  
  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.

• Reverse Standards Conversion
  Applicant: British Broadcasting Corporation
  
  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.

• UK Web Archiving Consortium
  Applicant: 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.

Judging

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

Click here for further information on the judging panel.
Update 30 January 2009
The link to Conservation Awards website page disabled as it is no longer available

Also announced this week are the:

• Student Conservator of the Year
• Anna Plowden Award for Research & Innovation

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

- Ends -

Notes to Editors:
For further information, please contact:
Maggie Jones, Executive Secretary, Digital Preservation Coalition
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Tel: 01904 435 362

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 Digital Preservation Coalition was established in 2001 to foster joint action to address the urgent challenges of securing the preservation of digital resources in the UK and to work with others internationally to secure our global digital memory and knowledge base. For further information see the website at www.dpconline.org