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WDPD: Reflections and Ripples

Sarah Middleton

Sarah Middleton

Last updated on 6 December 2019

Now that the dust has settled after World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD) on 7th November and I have finished travelling around the country for the year (I think), I have had a chance to pause and reflect on what was - quite frankly - another stupendous outpouring of digital preservation community goodness!

Unlike last year when we were in Amsterdam for the Memory Makers Conference and Digital Preservation Awards, I was on home turf in York primed and looking forward to remaining glued to my tweetdeck for a good 36 hours. I was relishing the fact that I could quite literally binge on whatever WDPD was going to throw my way, with no distractions!

And my word, did WDPD throw us digital preservation delights by the bucketload!

There are actually far too many things to mention each and everything that happened, so I have compiled a handy infographic of the day… mostly just for the sheer joy of reliving all of the fun stuff that happened:

WDPD2019 Report

But I can pick out some highlights, and I should, because they should be celebrated again and again! So, here are 5 of my favourite WDPD things:

  1. My favourite blog post

We had 67 blog posts on the DPC website throughout the duration of WDPD. The one that sticks with me though is the post by Alexander Barquero: La preservación Digital en Latinoamérica. I love the idea of the network in Latin America as a ‘suckerfish,’ not reinventing the wheel but closely following what is happening in the rest of the world, learning from other and making progress.

“The strategy used by the suckerfish, which attaches itself in a symbiotic relationship to other marine animals in order to travel further and faster, is one that we have been able to use in best practice and lessons learned from countries and institutions whose circumstances have enabled them to make more progress, or even to overcome the problems and difficulties of large-scale digital preservation.”

It also highlighted to me again, a need for digital preservation resources to be made available in languages other than English; something we are working on at the DPC and hope to progress more in 2020.

  1. Musical contributions

No reflection on WDPD could be complete without mentioning the genius of these people:

State Library of Queensland

University of Melbourne

Sharon McMeekin, DPC

The Preservers aka National Records of Scotland

There are no words. They need no words.

 

  1. Edible contributions

Cakes

I was expecting great things from the digital preservation bakers, and they did not disappoint! The photos above represent a mere ‘slice’ of the baking action from Jaana Pinnick, Kirsten Wright, Rosslyn Ross, Angela Beking, the teams at LIMA and the Digital Heritage Network in the Netherlands, Paul Wheatley, Jenny Mitcham and the Archaeology Data Service… but there was MUCH more.

I also admired Somaya Langley’s cake-resistance… but then immediately resumed my sampling of the baked goods on offer at Tanner Row!

 

  1. Bespoke WDPD couture

I was super impressed by Jaana Pinnick’s WDPD t-shirt. I will definitely be making myself one of these next year!

 

  1. Events

There were so many events taking place on WDPD, but my highlight was the unveiling of the ‘Bit List’ of Digitally Endangered Species by the DPC’s crack reporting team Sara Day Thomson and William Kilbride*:

This year’s Bit List reflects some of the concerns that have arisen since the last edition. The most notable for me is the addition of ‘Open Source Intelligence’ sources (or OSInt) which have been added as a new entry to the list. (We heard from Eliot Higgins from Bellingcat about this at iPres2019 and you can watch his keynote here if you missed it).

These sources have been used effectively by investigative journalists, as well as law enforcement agencies, around the world to test and disprove propaganda.  Investigations at the time of the Arab Spring, as well as the wars in Syria and Yemen have all used OSInt to test claims made, while focussed investigations into individual outrages like the downing of the Malaysian Airline MH17 and the poisoning of the Skripals have depended on access to large quantities of data published on the open web. It proves to me just how timely and relevant the Bit List, and the work of our community really is.

*I have since watched this again in full by the way, because mid-webinar the fire alarm went off here at the DPC Offices in York, and as a Fire Marshall I had to spring into action and evacuate the building.

 

But actually, the best thing about WDPD are the ripples…

I have enjoyed a number of ‘follow-up blog’ posts which have been published after the event. Continuing the conversation, sharing what people have learned…

Since the publication of the Bit List we have also had several enquiries about the entries we included, and we know that because of this resource there are now conversations happening that needed to happen! The Bit List did that, WDPD did that.

And I LOVE it when, every now and then someone new discovers the State Library of Queenland’s video and rejoice in it’s brilliance on twitter, and share it with their followers too. And then of course, I have to watch it again.

 

The ripples of WDPD continue to spread outward from our community, effecting, influencing and sharing our message. We did that.


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