Following on from the very successful 'Decoding the Digital' conference, the British Library Preservation Advisory Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition are undertaking a short programme of digital preservation roadshows across the UK in 2011.  We are delighted to invite you to the first stop on the tour, at the British Library in London on 4th February 2011.  Subsequent months will see us in Glasgow, Cardiff and York.  These events are designed to raise awareness of digital preservation issues, increase involvement with digital preservation activities and sign-post the support and resources available to help you on your way. They provide an introduction to digital preservation, build an understanding of the risks to digital materials, include practical sessions to help you apply digital preservation planning and tools, and feature speakers sharing their own experience of putting digital preservation into practice. 

The sessions are aimed at librarians, archivists and collection managers in all sectors and in all sizes of institution who want to find out more about digital preservation and the implications for their organisation of having to retain, manage and provide ongoing access to large quantities of digital material. Throughout the day participants will gain confidence in addressing digital preservation issues and knowledge of achievable steps to put theory into practice and safeguard vulnerable digital content.

More details including a draft programme and how to register are now available.

Appropriate and timely examination of the digital preservation plans of digitization projects can have a lasting impact.  Projects may not know or understand the risks they run. Simple assessment can help them identify and address these risks sooner rather than later.

The DPC and ULCC with the assistance of Portico and funding from JISC are pleased to announce the release of a new Case Note in digital preservation: Assessing Long-term Access from Short-term Digitization Projects.  This new case note, written by Patricia Sleeman of University of London Computer Centre provides a simple set of questions to which they used to evaluate the long term prospects of 16 digitization projects funded by JISC,  The survey questions will be useful to any funder wanting to test the durability of digital content that they are creating, and any digitization project manager keen to ensure that their work is robust.

Full text of the case note is available here.

The DPC has just released a Call for Proposals to undertake a number of short desk-based research projects and on that basis draft and deliver a set of ‘Technology Watch Reports’ for the Coalition, for completion by December 2011.  A grant of up to 30,000 GBP is available for research that will lead to the production of between five and nine reports on the topics of ‘Web Archiving’, ‘Trust in Post Cancellation Access Services’, ‘Preserving Computer Aided Design’, ‘Preserving Email’, ‘Significant properties’,  ‘Preserving and Conserving Digital Art’, ‘Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound‘, Intellectual Property Rights for Preservation' and 'Digital Forensics and Preservation'.

The full text of the Call for Proposals is available here.

The next DPC Planning Day will be held at the Grange Hotel in York on 17th and 18th of January.  The purpose of the day is to consult on and start drafting a new strategic for the Coalition to be adopted from January 2012 and to initiate an evaluation for the period 2009-2012.  The draft agenda is online at: http://www.dpconline.org/members/planning-days [pdf - login required]. Full members are invted to attend from the evening of the 17th where accommodation and dinner will be provided. Associate and personal members are invited to attend from 1030 on 18th.  Please confirm attendance to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 17th December. 

Comments are sought on the DPC's draft response to the DCMS's consultation on the regulations for Legal Deposit of electronic materials.  The draft response is online at: http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/direct-advocacy/dpc-response-to-electronic-legal-deposit [pdf, login required] Comments are requested by Monday 13th December. 

In January 2010 the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) consulted on draft regulations for the legal deposit of ‘free of charge’ electronic publications – the ‘free web’.  This consultation was intended to be the first part of a two part process and the DPC responded arguing inter alia that the second phase of proposals be presented without delay as arguably the ‘paid web’ includes material of lasting value and that until regulations were introduced this element of our collected digital memory would be at risk. 

 In September DCMS published a paper for the second phase of the consultation process.  The regulations discussed this time apply to a much broader range of material including publications for which there is a charge, publications which are subject to access restrictions and material compiled by queries from databases.  It excludes sound and film recordings and unpublished material.

Full details of this consultation are available online at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/Cons-non-print-legal-deposit-2011.pdf and the draft regulations to which the consultation applies are online at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/draft-regulations-legaldeposit-nonprint-publications.pdf Members may wish to consult the DPC guidance document on public policy consultations: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/473-direct-advocacy-and-public-policy-consultation-guide

The Royal Institution, London, 1st December 2010 (embargoed till 2200 local time)

The Institute for Conservation and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) are delighted to announce that the Memento Project led by Herbert Van De Sompel and colleagues of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Michael Nelson and colleagues of Old Dominion University, USA, has won the Digital Preservation Award 2010.

‘Memento offers an elegant and easily deployed method that reunites web archives with their home on the live web,’ explained Richard Ovenden, chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition.  ‘It opens web archives to tens of millions of new users and signals a dramatic change in the way we use and perceive digital archives.’ 

‘The ability to change and update pages is one of the web’s greatest advantages but it introduces a sort of structured instability which makes it hard to depend on web pages in the long term.  For more than a decade services like the UK Web Archive and the Internet Archive have provided a stable but partial memory of a fragment of the web – but users had no way of linking between current content and earlier versions held by web archives.’

‘The Memento project resolves this by letting users set a time preference in their browser.  The underlying technology then deploys basic, under-used features of the HTTP protocol to direct users to whichever archived copy of a website most closely matches their request’. 

‘The really impressive part of Memento is how it uses existing and widely deployed content negotiation tools embedded within the architecture of the web to connect users with archives’, commented Kevin Ashley, Chair of the Judges for the Digital Preservation Award.  ‘Most of the technology required to make the service work is already widely deployed.’

‘The Memento architecture means you no longer need to search archives or go to a special website to recover earlier versions of pages: with Memento our archives are always, already available.  The benefit for users is obvious, but in creating simple access it transforms the value and impact of web archiving.  In an environment where web archives are widely used and understood, the creation of web archives will seem less like a specialised or esoteric concern.’

‘Winning the Digital preservation Award is a really significant achievement’, explained William Kilbride, Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition which sponsored the award. 

‘There is no other prize like it, so it attracts genuinely international field and is only awarded after exacting scrutiny.  An expert panel subjects ensures a rigorous analysis of each nomination and the whole membership of the DPC is invited to comment on and select their favourite projects.  The shortlist, which was announced in Vienna this September included two US-based projects, one Trans-Atlantic blue ribbon task force, a pan European project and an initiative from the National Archives in the UK which gained a huge amount of press attention at the time of the General Election.’

‘To have won the Digital Preservation Award in the context of so many strong candidates should be taken as a significant mark of esteem from colleagues and peers.’

The Digital Preservation Award is one of five awards organised by a working party of the Institute for Conservation (ICON), known collectively as The Conservation Awards.  Each award celebrates different aspect of the highest standards of conservation skills, innovation and research, collections care and digital preservation.  The Awards, which were launched in 1991, are supported by Icon and sponsored by The Pilgrim Trust, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), and the Anna Plowden Trust.  Since 2005, the Awards have also been generously supported by Sir Paul McCartney.

Alison Richmond, ICON CE, commented: ‘In today’s current difficult economic climate, with many of our cultural heritage organisations under threat, it is incredibly important to celebrate the outstanding quality of current conservation and research being undertaken in Britain and further afield today. The winning projects clearly demonstrate that conservation of our cultural is not an end in itself, but a passport to wider access, and deeper knowledge and enjoyment of our heritage. ’

The Awards were presented at a ceremony followed by a drinks reception and held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London on 1 December 2010. Roy Clare (CEO of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council), speaking at the awards, said: ‘The art and science of conservation are vital to sustaining public understanding and enjoyment of cultural heritage and collections of all kinds, for this and future generations. The profession faces growing demands to respond openly and ever-more creatively to new standards, technologies, public expectations and resource constraints. The context is challenging, but I welcome ICON’s determination to work with members and partners to shape effective strategies for ensuring a vibrant future for conservation.’

What's New - Issue 32, December 2010

In this issue:

• What's on, and What's new
• Editorial: Data Curation is for life - not just for Christmas (Joy Davidson, DCC Associate Director)
• The Awards: Announcing the Winner of the Digital Preservation Award 2010,
• Interviews with the winner and the runners up about their projects: Memento, PLATO, Preserving Virtual Worlds and Web Continuity
• Your view: Commentary, questions and debate from readers

Presentations from the very successful JPEG 2000 for the Practitioner event in London on 16th November are now available.  Presentations include details of the JPEG 2000 profiles adopted and developed by leaders in the field and are therefore likely to be very useful for anyone trying to implement or understand best practice in the field.  The event was jointly organized by the Wellcome Library and JPEG 2000 Implementation Group with support from the DPC.

More details are online at: http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/19-jpeg-2000-for-the-practioner?xref=19

Papers, including the Agenda and Financial Report  for the Annual General Meeting of the Digital Preservation Coalition are now available in the members' area of the website for consultation in advance of the meeting.  The meeting starts at 1500 at the Starr Auditorium of Tate Modern, Bankside, London. Click here to access documents for the meeting (login required). Members are requested to inform the office if they plan to attend.

The Eighth Annual General Meeting of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be held at 15.00 on Wednesday the 1st of December 2010 in the Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside,London SE1 9TG. The meeting is expected to end at approximately 1600 when tea and coffeewill be served.The AGM is being chaired by Richard Ovenden, Chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Agenda for the 2010 AGM (login required)