In this issue:
- What's On - Forthcoming events from March 2014 onwards
- What's New - New reports and initiatives
- What's What - Many Hands Make Light Work of Digital Preservation, Sarah Norris, DPC
- Who's Who - 60 Second Interview with Anne Archer, Lloyds Banking Group Archives
- Who's Hiring - The Digital Preservation small ads
- Your View? - Comments and views from readers
What's New is a joint publication of the DPC and DCC
What's On
The DCC have a number of events coming up that may be of interest to you. For further details on any of these, please see our DCC events listings at http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/. You can also browse through our DCC events calendar to see a more extensive list of both DCC and external events.
Jisc Digital Festival
11-12 March 2014
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digifest
The festival will be innovative, informative and fun, showcasing and celebrating the very best in UK digital talent by bringing together experts and providers from the higher education, further education and skills sectors to share ideas and best practice. This is an opportunity for you to discuss real solutions to improve teaching and learning and enhance the student and research experience.
DCC curation webinar: Customising DMPonline
13 March 2014 and April 10 2014
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/webinars
DMPonline is the DCC's web-based tool to help researchers write Data Management Plans. We've recently released a new version of the tool which offers a lot of flexibility in terms of how institutions can customise it. You can create your own template to provide questions and guidance that researchers should respond to, add tailored guidance to help researchers answer funders questions, and provide examples and suggested answers. This webinar will demo the new version of DMPonline and profile the options available for customising the tool by showing examples from a number of early adopters.
OpenAIRE webinar
18 March 2014
http://www.openaire.eu/en/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2014/03/18/215/51%7C52%7C56%7C53%7C55%7C54/webinars-on-openaire-compatibility-for-repositories
These webinars will focus on how to implement the literature guidelines in DSpace, EPrints and other repositories, highlighting the recent updates in the OpenAIRE infrastructure and the main changes in the last version of the guidelines. The latest changes in the OpenAIRE guidelines are intended to guide repository managers to expose to the OpenAIRE infrastructure not only the EC funded research results, but also publications funded by other national or international funders.
Open Data in Government, Innovation and Research
21 March 2014
http://www.youngacademyofscotland.org.uk/our-work/open-data.html
Electronic access to all kinds of data is possible in this 'information age'; including cancer patient DNA sequences, civil servant salaries, traffic accident reports, academic publications, or the contents of your inbox. Indeed, data sharing has the potential to touch every aspect of our lives, simultaneously raising concerns and offering huge benefits.
Technology Bytes: Tools and Services for Digital Preservation in Bite-Sized Chunks - Matthew Addis from Arkivum (Members Only)
26 March 2014
http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/76-procuring-preservation-vendor-webinar-series?xref=83%3AArkivum
Following the success of our hugely popular event 'Procuring Preservation: Writing and Understanding Requirements in Digital Preservation' in December 2013, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is pleased to invite members to a series of webinars where vendors and tool developers will present the tools they currently support and their plans for the future. Individually, each webinar will privilege members with a deep dive into the latest tools and an insight into technology trends. They will help members assess the strengths of products available, how these might be best applied to digital preservation in practice, as well as providing a platform for members to cross-question developers. Collectively the series will ensure that DPC members have a comprehensive catalogue of the digital preservation market place, shortening the routes to procurement of digital preservation services and matching product development to their needs.
This webinar is the first in a series on tools and services from the DPC with more to come between March and June. The webinars will take place every two weeks on the first and third Wednesday of each month, as follows: Wednesday 26th March, 1pm - Matthew Addis from Arkivum; Wednesday 9th April, 4pm - Courteney Mumma from Artefactual; Wednesday 23rd April, 1pm - Luis Faria, KEEP Solutions; Wednesday 7th May, 1pm - Mike Quinn from Tessella; Wednesday 21st May, 1pm - Nir Sherwinter from Ex Libris; Wednesday 4th June, 1pm - Porter Olsen from BitCurator; Wednesday 18th June, 1pm - Michele Kimpton from Duraspace
SCAPE and OPF Workshop: Preserving Your Preservation Tools
26-27 March 2014
http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SP/SCAPE+Training+Event+-+Preserving+Your+Preservation+Tools
This two-day training workshop will focus on preparing maintainable software packages. You’ll get hand-on experience of open source tools and services such as Vagrant, GitHub, and Travis-CI. We will concentrate on core concepts and current practices for preparing software packages, covering important surrounding issues including documentation and licensing.
Research Data Alliance Third Plenary Meeting
26 - 28 March 2014
https://www.rd-alliance.org/rda-third-plenary-meeting.html
In partnership with Ireland, Australia hosts the Third Plenary which will focus on the theme, ‘The data sharing community: playing your part’ which looks to exploit the Research Data Alliance’s work to date to its fullest potential.
Taming the news beast - Finding context and value in text and data
1 April 2014
http://www.iskouk.org/events/news_beast_April_2014.htm
As content volumes and sources have exploded, for news producers and consumers alike it has become harder to extract context and value. The rise of digital publishing has eroded print revenues, and companies have to be innovative in packaging their offerings for a competitive marketplace. Consumers too are faced with an unprecedented information overload and need ways to ensure they see only the services they truly value. Organised by ISKO member, Helen Lippell, the meeting will explore how knowledge organisers should address the challenges.
Getting Started with Digital Preservation
4 April 2014 (The National Archives, London), 2 May 2014 (St Andrews)
http://www.dpconline.org/events
The Digital Preservation Coalition, with help from partners around the UK and Ireland, are delighted to invite you to join them at workshop which will equip collection managers, archivists, librarians and conservators with the skills necessary for ‘Getting started in digital preservation’. This day-long introduction assumes no prior knowledge except a willingness to engage with digital preservation. Through a series of presentations, case studies and exercises, participants will learn how to apply techniques of assessment, risk management and planning to help secure their digital collections.
7th International Biocuration Conference
6 - 9 April 2014
http://biocuration2014.events.oicr.on.ca/
Hosted by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, the Seventh International Biocuration Conderence provides a forum for curators and developers of biological databases to discuss their work, promote collaboration and foster a sense of community in this active and growing area of research.
NISO Virtual Conference: Dealing with the Data Deluge: Successful Techniques for Scientific Data Management
23 April 2014
www.niso.org/news/events/2014/virtual/data_deluge/
This virtual conference will explore in greater depth than traditional webinars some of the practical lessons from those who have implemented data management and developed best practices, as well as provide some insight into the evolving issues the community faces.
COAR Annual Meeting & joint OpenAIRE conference 2014
21 - 23 May 2014
https://www.coar-repositories.org/community/events/annual-meeting-2014/
A joint conference between OpenAIRE and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), along with the 5th COAR Annual Meeting will take place in Athens this spring over three days at the Athens Acropolis Museum.
Preserving eBooks
12 May 2014
Save the date! The latest in the DPC's series of Briefing Days will focus on the challenges and issues surrounding the preservation of eBook content. Further details will be announced shortly.
CRIS2014
13-15 May 2014
http://www.cris2014.org/
CRIS 2014 is the twelfth edition of the biennial series of conferences on Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) organised since 2002 by euroCRIS, a professional association of CRIS experts and custodian of the Common European Research Information Format CERIF. The purpose of CRIS 2014 is to discuss recent trends in the management, availability, quality and use of research information in the context of e-Science bringing together researchers, managers of research-performing or funding institutions, evaluators, librarians, ICT experts and policy makers.
Open Repositories 2014
9 - 13 June 2014
http://or2014.helsinki.fi/
The 9th International Conference on Open Repositories will be hosted by the University of Helsinki‘s twin libraries, Helsinki University Library and the National Library of Finland. The theme of this year's conference is 'Towards Repository Ecosystems' and the call for contributions to the programme is now open.
What's New
For more information on any of the items below, please visit the DCC website at http://www.dcc.ac.uk.
Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles
http://www.force11.org/datacitation
Sound, reproducible scholarship rests upon a foundation of robust, accessible data. For this to be so in practice as well as theory, data must be accorded due importance in the practice of scholarship and in the enduring scholarly record. In other words, data should be considered legitimate, citable products of research. Data citation, like the citation of other evidence and sources, is good research practice and is part of the scholarly ecosystem supporting data reuse. In support of this assertion, and to encourage good practice, Force11 has developed a set of guiding principles for data within scholarly literature, another dataset, or any other research object and invites participation and endorsement of these principles.
ULCC partnership with Arkivum Ltd.
http://arkivum.com/pages/services/#why
The partnership with Arkivum enables ULCC to offer an integrated, long term digital preservation solution to the academic, heritage and special collections sector - by adding large scale and long term digital archiving capabilities to its existing service portfolio of digital preservation training, consultancy, and repository development and management.
DPC offers DPTP scholarships
http://www.dpconline.org/newsroom/latest-news/1134-dpc-offers-4-scholarships-to-attend-dptp-training-course-in-april
The Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP) is designed for all those working in institutional information management who are grappling with fundamental issues of digital preservation. The Digital Preservation Coalition is pleased to offer four full scholarships which meet the costs of the course. The deadline for applications is 21st March.
TIMBUS newsletter is now available!
http://timbusproject.net/resources/blogs-news-items-etc/timbusnewsletter
Issue 3.1 is now available to download or read on the TIMBUS website.
APARSEN newsletter
http://www.alliancepermanentaccess.org/index.php/community/newsletter/aparsennewsletter201402/
The APARSEN project has issued its February 2014 newsletter which summarises our achievements in digital preservation (DP) research and investigation of the European DP landscape in the third project year.
DPC joins collaboration to create an electronic ‘ark’ for digital and paper-based records
http://expertpc.org/earkproject/
With an award of £6M from the European Commission, the E-Ark project will bring together a collaboration of archiving and digital preservation specialists to create a revolutionary method of archiving data, addressing the problems caused by the lack of coherence and interoperability between the many different systems in use across Europe. The system will ensure current digital archives, including ‘big data,’ are future-proofed and sustainable. Digital preservation specialists at the University of Portsmouth are leading the project, which involves over a dozen major partners including a core group of European national archives.
Digital Preservation Awards
http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/awards/digital-preservation-awards-2014
The Digital Preservation Awards is the most prominent celebration of achievement for those people and organisations who have made significant and innovative contributions to maintaining a digital legacy, with the gala ceremony becoming a hotly anticipated date for all events diaries. Established in 2004, the Digital Preservation Awards' hunt for this years’ outstanding contributors will begin as details of the Digital Preservation Awards will be announced at the Jisc Digital Festival (Digifest) on 11th – 12th March this year.
9th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) – Presentations now available
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc14/programme-presentations
This year, IDCC focussed on how data-driven developments are changing the world around us, recognising that the growing volume and complexity of data provides institutions, researchers, businesses and communities with a range of exciting opportunities and challenges. The Conference explored the expanding portfolio of tools and data services, as well as the diverse skills that are essential to explore, manage, use and benefit from valuable data assets. The programme reflected cultural, technical and economic perspectives and illustrated the progress made in this arena in recent months. The presentations from the conference are now available from the conference website.
Launch of FOSTER project to facilitate Open Science
http://www.fosteropenscience.eu
Open Access and Open Science principles are an essential part of knowledge creation and sharing. They directly support the researchers need for greater impact and optimum dissemination of research, while also enabling the engagement of citizen scientists and society at large. FOSTER (Foster Open Science Training for European Research) is a two year, European Commission-funded project which will help to establish sustainable mechanisms for increasing EU researchers’ capacity to engage with open science and embed it into their daily workflows. The project will help to ensure that researchers optimize their research visibility and potential impact and are more aware of and able to adhere with EU open access policies.
What's What - Many Hands Make Light Work of Digital Preservation
Sarah Norris, Senior Project Officer, Digital Preservation Coalition
As relative newcomer to the digital preservation world, and prior to being welcomed into the fold, I assumed all organisations would be the same as my previous corporate employers; fiercely competitive, highly secretive about their ideas and developments (heaven forbid anyone might want to steal these fascinating gems), and quite frankly conspiratorial. Just the vaguest of insights into the activities of the rest of our industries were gleaned by Sherlock Holmes-esque sleuthing.
Imagine my pleasant surprise at coming to work for the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), and being introduced to all manner of different organisations all doing similar things, sharing information, generally collaborating, and rubbing along not just quite nicely, but pretty damned effectively without a conspiratorial thought in their heads (or so it seems).
I was amazed at the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit which resulted from locking a group of digital preservation and techie boffins in a room for the day at the DPC/SPRUCE Booksprint last year (apparently not some sort of book balancing egg-and-spoon race as I had first though after all). Equally heartening was the DPC’s Procuring Preservation event in December last year. Hailed as THE BEST DPC event ever, digital preservation vendors lined up shoulder to shoulder to answer questions fielded by representatives of the DPC’s membership, with the ‘un-conference’ later that day leading to some more collaborative working suggestions such as a series of vendor showcase webinars. More to come on this…
My point is of course, that many hands do indeed make light, easier, and seemingly much more fun work, the wheel does not need to be re-invented, and two heads are better than one.
Of course I am biased as part of the 4C Project Team, but this merry band of individuals and organisations really does seem to have channelled this community spirit to great effect.
An ‘open and social’ project, it is by design a ‘Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation’ designed to help public and private organisations invest more effectively in digital curation and preservation, through the development of really useful resources – not just the sort that are ceremoniously unveiled, then subsequently left to gather dust. This team blogs, tweets and publishes results as it goes, inviting all interested parties to shout up with comments or suggestions which may shape the project’s direction of travel.
Twelve months in and just past its halfway mark, the project has already held one large scale consultation followed by three detailed focus groups and one workshop. More than three hundred people have participated in the project so far, and results of this engagement have helped analyse user requirements against existing and emerging research, and informed an assessment of gaps in the current provision of tools, frameworks and models. And there’s more to come.
In her blog ‘Whistle for the Start of the Second Half’ last week, my 4C colleague Katarina Haage from the Deuschte Nationalbibliotek, laid out our plan for even more community engagement this year. As a co-ordinated support action, 4C relies enormously on community input and these focus groups, workshops and consultations are opportunities to hoover up your inputs, suggestions and information as we embark on our last leg of the project.
The focus groups will also test the digital preservation community’s reaction to key project deliverables like the Cost Concept Model, the Curation Costs Exchange (CCEx), the Economic Sustainability Reference Model (ESRM) and the Roadmap.
Already in draft, the CCEx will provide a means through which interested parties will be able to access all other project deliverables, as well as other information on the costs of curation, in exchange for a little information about their own digital curation activities. There is still a way to go in developing the CCEx, but with input from the digital preservation community, considerable progress has already been made in achieving three initial milestones: a draft submission template, a draft specification and an outline of a pilot. These lay the ground work for phased requirements gathering which will take place before the end of 2014.
More input from the digital preservation community is critical however, so 4C is inviting any organisation which manages content to engage with the CCEx, contributing not just their cost data (which will all be handled anonymously and confidentially by the way) but also their experiences of investment risk assessments, cost modelling and cost models. We’re calling this ‘The Cost Quest.’
In return, the CCEx will support strategic planning and tactical decision making by providing that all-too-valuable information to optimise your budgets; enabling benchmarking of costs against other similar organisations; comparison of how similar organizations proceed to support decision making with regard to investment in digital preservation, on a political level; providing information to support the development of (internal/external) business cases for a digital curation strategy; and providing information to help with evaluating proposals for funding. No Sherlock Holmes hat or undercover activity required.
To summarise this community themed ‘What’s New?’ I’d like to reiterate what you all knew well before I came along, that the digital preservation community is critical to solving its own problems.
So do. Get your sleeves rolled up, muck in and continue to be part of breaking new ground, either through DPC and DCC events (there’s plenty coming up and those most imminent are listed below in What’s On), by getting involved in the 4C Project and sharing your experiences, or by joining the DPC (which incidentally loads of new organisations have in the last six months).
Who's Who - A 60 Second Interview with Anne Archer, Lloyds Banking Group Archives
Where do you work and what's your job title?
I work for Lloyds Banking Group Archives and my job title is Senior Archivist.
Tell us a bit about your organisation
Lloyds Banking Group is a financial services organisation that manages a portfolio of brands including Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland. The Archives represent the Group’s corporate memory. Our collections date back to 1695 when Bank of Scotland was founded. We have a wide range of records including minutes, photographs, publicity and artefacts. As well as providing evidence of past actions, our collections also reflect the social and economic climate in which they were produced.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Digital preservation! A couple of years ago, I was allocated the project of researching digital preservation and starting a campaign of internal lobbying so that we could get our requirements on the Group’s agenda. We’re in a much stronger place now: we should be beginning a study phase soon to build our requirements and understand the solutions available.
My role is very varied. Recently, I have been involved in (among other things) plans for the celebration of Lloyds Bank’s 250 years in 2015, identifying material to contribute to a video on the Bank’s use of technology over the years, and organising a training day for research students.
How did you end up in digital preservation?
At Lloyds, we knew it was something we would have to consider soon, as we started to see a rise in the number of records transferred to us in digital format. I’m pleased that it was allocated to me, as it’s given me the chance to become more knowledgeable about an interesting, if frustrating at times, topic.
What are the challenges of digital preservation for an organisation such as yours?
Persuading the right people that a digital preservation system is needed and that they should spend money on it. Knowing which risks and issues should be highlighted in order to fit in with the Group’s priorities. Sometimes that can be difficult: as an Archivist you might want to focus on the historical significance of your collection, but while the Group wouldn’t disagree with this, it’s hard to find an available funding stream. Arguments need to align the business and its core aims and values.
What sort of partnerships would you like to develop?
Because we are in the early stages of our project, it would be useful to speak to as many people as possible. I’ve found it very valuable meeting others working in digital preservation and understanding the issues they face.
If we could invent one tool or service that would help you, what would it be?
A very powerful content profiling and search tool that can analyse and interpret our records, so that our solution can be shown to have a real operational benefit.
And if you could give people one piece of advice about digital preservation ....?
Get started. Once you understand some of the issues it becomes more manageable. Currently we have an advocacy strand to our work (in order to gain funding) and a ‘business as usual’ strand, where we try to take any possible small steps to manage and preserve our digital records before putting a solution in place.
If you could save for perpetuity just one digital file, what would it be?
Absolutely no idea!
If I had to pick one from our collections, it might be something from the London 2012 partnership, or for sheer entertainment value, a TSB TV advert with a dance troupe that looked very much like Pan’s People. They just don’t make adverts like that any more.
Finally, where can we contact you or find out about your work?
You can contact me by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I would be very interested in hearing from other Archives that have put a solution in place, or are in a similar position to us. Information sharing has been a valuable part of our project.
Who's Hiring: The Digital Preservation Small Ads
University of St Andrews: Applications Developer (Research Computing)
(St Andrews, Full-time, Salary: 30,728 - 36,661 GBP pa, Closing Date: 9 April 2014)
IT Services is looking for a highly motivated individual with a strong interest in e-Research to join the Research Computing Team as Applications Developer (Research Computing). The team currently consists of two liaison staff and one Applications Developer.
See: http://bit.ly/1g46QsC
ULCC: Web/Repositories Developer
(London, Permanent, Full-Time, Salary: 31,970 - 38,795 GBP pa, Closing Date: 23 March 2014)
ULCC is looking for a talented and enthusiastic web and database developer to join its award-winning Academic & Research Technologies team. The position includes contributing to a wide range of projects and services supporting academic research, digital libraries and archives, assisting our customers in developing new and innovative solutions to manage research data and information.
See: http://is.gd/ulccrepodev14
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