The Digital Preservation Coalition’s Leadership Programme has awarded five scholarships so that members can send staff to the Digital Futures Academy in London in March.   The long list of applicants was examined by a small review committee, and candidates were selected against three criteria – the role that the course would have in their career development, the benefits that accrue to a DPC member from attendance, and the extent to which digital preservation was part of their organisational role.

The selected candidates are:

• Matthew Herring, University of York
• Huw Jones, Cambridge University
• Louise Lawson, Tate
• Catherine Ryan, National Library of Ireland
• Ian Savage, English Heritage

‘We’ve previously given grants to other training courses before, but this is the first time we’ve sponsored members to attend Digital Futures’, explained William Kilbride, Executive Director of the DPC.  ‘One of our main functions is to ensure that the workforce has the skills needed to manage digital collections for the long term – a goal which is best achieved by supporting a diverse mix of expert training.  We’re delighted to be working with Simon Tanner and his colleagues in the Digital Futures Academy and we are confident that the course will have a significant benefit to the recipients and their employers.’

Led by experts of international renown, the Digital Futures Academy focuses on the creation, delivery and preservation of digital resources from cultural and memory institutions. The five day course is aimed at managers and other practitioners from the library, museum, heritage and cultural sectors looking to understand the strategic and management issues of developing digital resources from digitization to delivery. The Digital Futures Academy is operated and organised by the King’s College London.

Simon Tanner, course organiser welcomed the five DPC candidates.  ‘I’m delighted the DPC Leadership Programme has supported the Digital Futures Academy in this way and I was very impressed by the quality of applications received.  The Academy enables participants to develop their own professional networks outside their own organisations, the sorts of relationships which strengthens the Coalition as well as its members.’

For more on the DPC Leadership Programme see: http://bit.ly/c4hDmm
For more about the DPC and to Join see: http://bit.ly/y7JWB1
For more about the Digital Futures Academy see: http://bit.ly/4BN9NL

DPC is delighted to extend an invitation from JISc so that members can attend the 'Curation in the Cloud' workshop in London 7-8th March.  This event will assess the potential and practicalities of using cloud-based solutions for the long-term preservation of digital materials, focusing particularly on data that originates from research or that supports research processes. 

In recent years the hype around cloud computing as a route to delivering a dazzling array of services has (to quote Gartner) been 'deafening'. But much of the focus has been on using cloud infrastructure to create, process and analyse data, often in relation to business information and in the context of either the virtualisation and green ICT agendas, or for the purpose of providing flexible computational capacity for actively undertaking research work. There has been less opportunity to consider the potential of this technology to address the data curation and long-term preservation needs of researchers and research organisations. Especially in light of emerging UK government-led directives on ensuring long-term open access to publicly funded research, it is more important than ever that organisations have a clear sense of all the choices that are available to them when investing in this critical area.

Because this event is being organised by JISC, members from higher education institutions are invited to register directly at:

https://www.eventsforce.net/jisc/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=51486&ef_sel_menu=475&eventID=186&eventID=186

The DPC has a block booking of 5 places at this event for those members outside of HE, which will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, so members outside of the higher education sector are asked to contact williamATdpconlineDOTorg before reserving a place.

For more information see: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2012/03/curationinthecloud.aspx

The Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to welcome the Information Directorate of the University of York as its newest member.

'Accessing and preserving digital information is one of the great challenges of the 21st century,' explained Chris Webb of the University of York. 'We recognise the importance and scale of the challenge, and we're pleased to join the DPC, which is a key partnership that enables these difficult areas to be tackled for the benefit of all.'

Richard Ovenden, chair of the Coalition, welcomed this newest member.  ''York University has a long association with the DPC and our main offices are on campus in Heslington.  It's great that they have now joined the Coalition in their own right and we are looking forward to working with them.'

William Kilbride of the DPC also welcomed the news: 'DPC's new strategic plan has a renewed emphasis on workforce development and assurance.  York University will have priority access to these activities empowering their staff and giving them a ready-made support network.'

Vacancy - Digital Archivist at The Archaeology Data service (ADS), York, UK

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) has a vacancy for a Digital Archivist for a fixed term of two years, commencing immediately.

The post will involve accessioning, mounting, and indexing of data collections, validation of data and conversion into preferred formats; curation and migration of digital collections; design and development of user interfaces; and discussion and data audits with data depositors.

You should have a first degree or postgraduate qualification in archaeology and/or computer science, and you should possess an exceptionally high level of ICT skills.

Full details and a job description (PDF) are available from the University of York jobs pages:

https://jobs.york.ac.uk/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_job?p_web_site_id=3885&p_web_page_id=142228

Notes from POCOS 'Preserving Gaming Environments and Virtual Worlds' (Cardiff, January 26-27) now available

Informal notes from the 'POCOS' Preserving Gaming Environments and Virtual Worlds Symposium are now available online for DPC members.

JISC is funding Portsmouth University and partners to host a series of seminars and reports on the preservation of ‘complex objects’. This ‘POCOS’ project hosted an event on visualisation and simulation in London in June on the preservation of software art in October. This third and final event on gaming was held in Cardiff on 26 and 27 January 2012.

• Notes from the Preserving Gaming Environments and Virtual Worlds are available for DPC members (login required, PDF, 132KB)
• login or register for the DPC website

Trust and EJournals - Slides Now Available

Presentations from the DPC event 'Trust and E-journals' 31 January 2012 are now available online at:

http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/39-trust?xref=39

They include presentations from Neil Beagrie, Liam Earney, Kate Wittenberg, Adam Rusbridge, Randy Kiefer, Marcel Ras, Peter Burnhill, Fiona Murphy and Richard Kidd. The event notes have been written up on Etherpad by Patrick Hadley PhD student at The University of York. A full report will be available here shortly.

What's New - Issue 42, February 2012

In this issue:

• What's On - Forthcoming events from February 2012 onwards
• What's New - New reports and initiatives since the last issue
• What's What - Institutional Research Data Management services: a growing trend - Sarah Jones, DCC
• Who's Who - Sixty second interview with Kate Jennings, Tate
• One World - Digital Preservation in France - Louise Fauduet, Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Your View? - Comments and views from readers

What's New is a joint publication of the DPC and DCC

Student Conference 'What I wish I knew before I started' - slides now available

Presentations from the DPC / Archives and Records Association joint student conference 'What I wish I knew before I started' are now available online at:

http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/38-studentconference?xref=38

They include presentations from Sarah Higgins, William Kilbride, Dave Thompson, Adrian Brown, Andrew Fetherston and Helen Hockx-Yu.The event has also been blogged by Catherine Macintyre of LSE who attended: http://lib-1.lse.ac.uk/archivesblog/?p=4012

Leeds University Library is delighted to announce the launch of the Sustainable PReservation Using Community Engagement (SPRUCE) project. SPRUCE will 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.

SPRUCE is aiming to foster a vibrant and self-supporting community of digital preservation practitioners via a mixture of online interaction and face to face events based on the successful AQuA Project mashups (see http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/AQuA/Home). The events will provide support and technical expertise to address specific digital preservation challenges. The best work from event attendees will secure funding awards to further develop the activity and embed it within business as usual processes at the home institution. £60k is available for these awards and will be allocated during the 2 year life of the SPRUCE project.

SPRUCE will build on the experience of these activities in order to develop a strong business case for digital preservation, with the aim of supporting and embedding good DP practise beyond the life of the project.

The first SPRUCE mashup will be held in Glasgow in April 2012. Details will be made available shortly on the SPRUCE website here: http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/spruce

SPRUCE is a JISC funded partnership between Leeds University Library, the British Library, the London School of Economics, the Digital Preservation Coalition, and the Open Planets Foundation.

Vacancy - Project Manager at University of Leeds - SPRUCE Project

The University of Leeds has recently been awarded Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funding to undertake the SPRUCE Project under JISC 12/11 Digital Preservation Funding Call. The SPRUCE Project will inspire, guide, support and enable UK Higher Education Institute’s (HEI) to address preservation gaps and to use the knowledge gathered from that support work to articulate a compelling business case for digital preservation. The Project will be led by Leeds University Library in collaboration with four partners: the British Library, the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Open Planets Foundation and the London School of Economics.

A graduate with a good knowledge of relevant issues in Higher Education, you will be able to demonstrate your experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team, and with senior business and IT/IS partners. In particular you will have experience of working in one or more of the following areas: digital content creation and/or description; digital preservation strategies, tools or techniques; business case creation and/or cost/benefit analysis; management of a JISC funded project; institutional policy creation; stakeholder evidence capture and analysis; event organisation and facilitation; formal report writing.

Professional & Managerial Grade 8 (£36,862 - £44,016 p.a.), Full time, Fixed-term until 30 November 2013. Deadline 23rd Jan 2012. For more details see: http://t.co/xkM7ltmA