Blog

Rachel MacGregor, Digital Preservation Officer, and Eren Delaney, Digital Preservation Specialist, at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick

For World Digital Preservation Day 2025, we invited DPC Members and Supporters to share their reflections on this year’s theme, “Why Preserve?”. As part of this series, Rachel MacGregor and Eren Delaney offer the Modern Records Centre's perspective on the importance of safeguarding our digital heritage. Watch the vlog below to hear their thoughts!

Simon Wilson is Archives Consultant at Simon P. Wilson Consultancy

As an archives consultant I have the privilege of working with a wide range of organisations facing different challenges and opportunities. Much of this work tends to remain behind the scenes but I wanted to share a few reflections from current and recent client projects relating to the question of Why preserve?

Somaya Langley is Digital Preservation Manager at the Science Museum Group

The Science Museum Group (SMG) cares for over seven million collection objects and items, many of outstanding national and international significance. Our collection tells the story of our world, charting the development and history of science, technology, engineering, media, and medicine through many centuries. Situated across England, we provide access to the public through our five museums (Bradford, London, Manchester, Shildon, York), and through guided tours of our collection store at the Science and Innovation Park (Wroughton). SMG’s archive and library collection is accessible via five of our six sites, and our object photography is available via Collections Online.

Digital Preservation has now been running as a project at SMG for four years, and as a team (of two) for two years. This team collectively possesses over 50 years of combined experience in working at the intersection of creativity, culture, heritage, and technology.

Jean-Yves Le Meur is the Digital Memory Project Leader at CERN and Danae Broustail is an Openlab Summer Student at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) 

For World Digital Preservation Day 2025, we invited DPC Members and Supporters to share their reflections on this year’s theme, “Why Preserve?”. As part of this series, Jean-Yves Le Meur and Danae Broustail created a vlog with CERN's perspective on the great importance of digital preservation. Watch their vlog below!

Irina Schmid, Instructor and Digital Collections Archivist, works at the American University in Cairo.

A reflection from the Digitization Center at American University in Cairo on World Digital Preservation Day

Imagine a graduate student in São Paulo discovering a 19th-century Arabic poem that perfectly captures her research question. A historian in Tokyo finding administrative records that illuminate Ottoman trade networks. A teenager in Detroit exploring her family's cultural heritage through digitized manuscripts from her grandparents' homeland.

These moments of connection across time and space answer the fundamental question: Why preserve?

Villy A. Magero is Principal Records Management Officer at Nairobi City County Assembly, Kenya and is a Member of Kenya Association of Records Managers (KARMA) 

Legislative records, Hansards, Committee reports, bills, petitions, administrative records and minutes are more than paper work. They are the DNA of the democratic decision making. Without them the Nairobi City County Assembly cannot demonstrate accountability, preserve memory or enable residents to hold leaders accountable.

Across the world, parliaments and assemblies face the challenge of safeguarding these records amid technological change, resource limitations and political transitions. In Kenya the Nairobi City County Assembly provides a practical case study of both the promise and the challenge of legislative records preservation.

Paul Stokes is Subject Matter Expert (Digital Preservation) at Jisc; Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition; Chair of the DPC Advocacy and Community Engagement sub-committee; Director of the Open Preservation Foundation; Director of OPF NL.

For World Digital Preservation Day 2025, we invited DPC Members and Supporters to share their reflections on this year’s theme, “Why Preserve?”. As part of this series, Paul Stokes offers his perspective on the importance of safeguarding our digital heritage. Watch the vlog below to hear his thoughts!

Garth Stewart is Head of Good Practice with the Digital Preservation Coalition

For World Digital Preservation Day 2025, Garth Stewart walked over to the Argyll Street Ash Tree in Glasgow and recorded a vlog for us all. Watch it now to hear Garth's thoughts on the need to preserve!

Zhenxin Wu is the deputy director of NDPP (National Digital Preservation Program), and she is also a senior researcher of the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Additionally, she is a professor of school of economics and management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.

[Chinese version below / 中文版本见下方 ]

It is well-known that we live in an era where the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge are fully integrated into a digital ecosystem. Digital formats have already become the most popular format for S&T outcomes such as journal articles, academic monographs, and technical patents, etc. Meanwhile, rich media content, academic social networks, digital humanities, and digital arts have increasingly become indispensable information resources across all fields. All signs clearly indicate that in our current era, the long-term preservation of knowledge and culture is almost synonymous with the long-term preservation of digital information.

The National Digital Preservation Program (NDPP), a collaborative preservation system of six institutions, including libraries and information institutions, is responsible for the long-term preservation of our knowledge and culture in China.

Cassie Shaw works as Digital Archivist at RMIT University Archives 

In August 2025, the RMIT University Information Governance Board endorsed our Digital Preservation Roadmap. It was an exciting mile marker for our team at the University Archives, after close to three years’ work on both the roadmap and our underlying Digital Preservation Strategy 2024-2031, which is a foundational document for improving digital preservation capability and capacity across the University.

RMIT University Archives operates as the institutional repository for university records that are evidence of the functions and activities performed throughout RMIT.  Our mission is to acquire, organise, preserve and publicise such materials and to assist researchers in their use. This is our what.

We are always conscious that maintaining compliance with laws and regulations that support accountability, transparency and authenticity is key, but in this process, we also focussed on how important it is to keep the stories of the work we all do. We spend our work lives doing useful, interesting and valuable things that we want to remember, to recognise both the fact that we do these things, but also that investment in great ideas, work and people. This is our why.