Blog

Today’s Reading Club session was a thought provoking discussion inspired by an article from Amber Cushing and Giulia Osti in the Journal of Documentation - “So how do we balance all of these needs?”: how the concept of AI technology impacts digital archival expertise (https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2022-0170).

The article summarized the thoughts and expectations of a focus group of archival practitioners around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact on expertise within the sector. After a brief round of introductions and some background on our own individual experiences relating to use of AI in our digital preservation work, we turned to a more general discussion of the article and I’ve tried to sum up a few key points below:

Helen Dafter is Archivist at The Postal Museum in the UK

What’s New DPC CAT?

This blog is based on a presentation given at the DPC Unconference 2023.

The Postal Museum has recently used the DPC’s Competency Audit Toolkit  (CAT) to identify staff skills and skill gaps at an organisational level.

Barbara Fuentes is Web Archiving Officer at National Records of Scotland. She attended the IIPC Web Archiving Conference 2023 with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

I recently received a Career Development Fund Grant to attend the IIPC Web Archiving Conference in Hilversum. The conference was held at the colourful Institute for Sound and Vision and KB, National Library of Netherlands.

Jasmine Patel is a Digital Preservation Intern at the University of Edinburgh. This blog post was originally posted on the Information Services Group Student Employee Blog here.

Try, test, fail. Wait a bit, try again, fail, mentally recover, try it on a PC, try it on a Mac, try giving the machine a good bonk on the head (or sending it to the naughty step if you’re feeling nice).

Welcome to the world of Digital Preservation – or, as the cool kids know it: Digipres.

Peter Chan is the web archivist at Stanford University Libraries. He served as the project manager for the ePADD initiative from 2012-2019. 

This blog was created with the assistance of ChatGPT.

Introduction

Email archives are a valuable resource for individuals and organizations alike. They contain a wealth of information and insights that can be harnessed for various purposes. However, navigating through extensive email archives can be a daunting task. In this article, we will explore three effective ways to unlock the potential of email archives: search, browse, and question and answer.

This blog was co-written by Svenia Pohlkamp (German National Library (Frankfurt)), Yvonne Tunnat (Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (Kiel)) and Monika Zarnitz (Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (Kiel)), members of nestor, an Allied Organisation of the DPC.

One thing we have learned during the pandemic: We can do lots of things online. At the height of the pandemic, nestor has moved its services to online meetings and to the wiki to keep in touch with its members. Thus, nestor managed to keep involved in the development of current best practices in digital preservation (DP):

nestor is the cooperation network for Digital Preservation. nestor supports knowledge transfer and therefore all institutions dealing with DP.

Bryony Hooper is the Digital Preservation Manager at the University of Sheffield

At the University of Sheffield, we have established a Digital Preservation Advisory Group (DPAG) which is composed of staff across the University who provide support and oversight for the coordination of our Digital Preservation activities. We meet periodically and make recommendations for the University’s Digital Preservation Service, including policy and strategic planning, as well as the development of resources needed to fulfil our mission. That mission is that the Digital Preservation Service seeks to facilitate the long-term discovery of, and access to, key information assets of the University. The University aims to embed good practice in digital preservation throughout the organization to enable new opportunities, while safeguarding institutional and cultural memory.

Our second DPC Reading Club was held last month and focused on an article by Monique Lassere and Jess M. Whyte called “Balancing Care and Authenticity in Digital Collections: A Radical Empathy Approach to Working with Disk Images” (available at https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v3i2.125)

This paper was a great follow on from our reading from Thorsten Ries last time as it looked at the topic of digital forensics from a different angle, suggesting a ‘radical empathy’ approach to tackling disk images.

We had another great session, with lots of interesting discussion arising from the article.

Liz Long is Assistant Director DAIR (Digital Archives Innovation and Research) at The National Archives of Australia. She recently attended the AMaGA 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

As a DPC grant recipient, I attended the Australian Museum and Gallery Association’s (AMaGA) conference in Newcastle from 16-19 May 2023. The theme, Discomfort: Brave conversations and new connections in changing environments, was largely explored via two key concepts of rapid technological and socio-cultural change in GLAM institutions. The two main themes of digital disruption and listening to marginalised voices made for a rich program that left me inspired rather than overwhelmed or weighed down by the all-too-common guilt that is felt by cultural heritage workers around our institutions’ past links with colonialism.

Bridie-Ann Carr is the Records and Information Manager at Imperial War Museums. She recently attended the IRMS 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

In mid-May I attended the IRMS Conference with support from the Career Development Fund. This year’s theme was ‘Embracing a New Information Generation’, which felt like a perfect fit, as I am new professional working with electronic records. I have wanted to attend a conference since qualifying as a Records Manager and set myself the aim to come back to IWM with new skills and knowledge I could immediately apply to my work. I also wanted to meet as many people as I could from across our sector. Covid moved many events on online and I feel like I have missed out on learning from others over a cup of tea and a biscuit!