Blog

Alexandra Mitchell is Archivist at the University of Salford. She attended IDCC 2020 with support from the DPC's Career Development Fund which is funded by DPC Supporters.

Being a first-time attendee at the IDCC Conference I didn’t know quite what to expect. With my background and experience firmly rooted within archives, most of the conferences I have attended have tended to be dominated by the archive profession. The opportunity to attend the IDCC Conference thanks to the DPC Scholarship fund was not only a refreshing change but highlighted just how much we can learn from those working in other sectors on the management, preservation, access and use of digital content. The conference would prove to be an interesting and dynamic few days.

Sally Cholewa is an Archivist at RBS. She attended AV Winter School 2020 with support from the DPC's Career Development Fund which is funded by DPC Supporters.

A day in the life of a Winter School for Audio-visual Archiving participant

Judith Carr is the Research Data Manager at the University of Liverpool. She attended IDCC 2020 with support from the DPC's Career Development Fund which is funded by DPC Supporters.

First of all, I need to thank the Digital Preservation Coalition for giving me the opportunity to attend my first IDCC conference.

Despite the crazy weather, hail, rain, sunshine, thunder and wind, sometimes in the same afternoon (just Dublin weather apparently), I enjoyed the conference. There were many interesting talks and workshops.

Hannah Smith is Digital Archives Manager at Historic Environment Scotland. She attended IDCC 2020 with support from the DPC's Career Development Fund which is funded by DPC Supporters.

As part of my scholarship to attend the IDCC 2020 in Dublin, I was asked to write a blog post on the session ‘Long-term data preservation data lifecycle, standardisation process, implementation and lessons learned’ by Iolanda Maggio. The title of this session made me feel a little hesitant at my ability to follow the discussion, but it turned out to be one of the most relevant sessions to my own role and organisation.

By Brian Dietz (Digital Program Librarian for Special Collection, NC State University Libraries), Shira Peltzman (Digital Archivist, UCLA Library) and Jessica Venlet (Assistant University Archivist for Digital Records and Records Management, UNC at Chapel Hill University Libraries)

The decisions facing those who work with born-digital archival materials are myriad. While it has become increasingly easier to find technical processing workflows and lists of handy tools, documentation and guidance on exactly how to provide access to our born-digital collections has lagged behind in our collective conversations. 

Hannah Smith is Digital Archives Manager at Historic Environment Scotland. She attended IDCC 2020 with support from the DPC's Career Development Fund which is funded by DPC Supporters.

On the first day of the main conference at the 15^th IDCC I opted to attend the mornings sessions on the theme of ‘Collaboration on Digital Curation’, with Ixchel Faniel’s session on ‘Identifying Opportunities for Collective Curation During Archaeological Excavations’ as the main source for this blog post.

The National Library of Ireland (NLI) is home to collections that record the memory of Ireland. This includes extensive visual collections in the form of prints, drawings and ephemera. The NLI also holds the world’s largest collection of photographs relating to Ireland, in a variety of formats from daguerreotypes to chromogenic processes. But what about the contemporary visual record, Irish born digital photography?

In order to develop our capacity to collect, preserve and share Irish heritage, which is now in digital form, the library has commenced a series of three pilot projects focused on unpublished born digital collections. These originate from diverse sources representing contemporary Irish life. Late in 2019 bestselling Irish author Marian Keyes donated the archive of her novel, The Mystery of Mercy Close and we look forward to announcing the third donor later this year.

Sean Macmillan is an Archivist currently based at the University of London, Senate House Library. At Senate House and in past roles, he’s tackled various digital preservation challenges. He’s currently occupied with helping to develop Senate House’s Digital Ecosystem project. He also recently catalogued the Cusichaca Trust Archive at Senate House, which includes a substantial collection of valuable digital media. He also helped to implement digital workflows in the Bodleian’s BEAM department and planned preservation for the private audio-visual archives of a high-profile client.

Throughout these experiences, Sean has accumulated knowledge and discovered resources about preserving digital materials. To make the most of this valuable information and to keep it close to hand, Sean developed an app using Filemaker Pro. Now, having worked at a range of different organisations, that app holds quite a rich store of information. At this stage, Sean is interested in learning if others might find it useful or have suggestions for how it might be sustained or enhanced. In this blog post, Sean describes the background of DAPP, shows how it can be used at the moment, and issues a call for feedback and advice.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure to acknowledge the work of Barbara Sierman at a workshop hosted in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Den Haag. Barbara had invited me, Micky Lindlar of TIB in Hamburg, Ingrid Dillo of DANS and Marcel Ras of DHN to speak on the single word ‘Re-use’. This blog is the text of my contribution to that discussion.  The presentation was also recorded and shared online. The recording can be viewed here.

It's been all action at the DPC in recent weeks, what with new members of staff and even a new office in Australia, but we've also been beavering away on some new member offerings in the background. In this blog post I'm going to talk about a suite of new (and revised) resources for our members which will be appearing over the next few months.