Watch the Ceremony

In an exciting finale to the Digital Preservation Awards 2024, organisations and practitioners of digital preservation from around the world gathered together for a glittering presentation ceremony on Monday 16th September 2024, at the iPRES 2024 conference in Ghent, Belgium! Watch the ceremony now:

See photos from the awards ceremony

Meet the Winners

Collaborative models of care: preserving Australian First Nations digital cultural heritage 

2024 Winner of the International Council on Archives Award for Collaboration and Cooperation presented by Gustavo Castaner and April Miller Collaborative Models of Care was designed to provide a ‘best-practice blueprint’ for non- First Nations professionals wanting to contribute their digitisation and digital preservation skills, knowledge and expertise towards the care of digital cultural heritage held by and produced in Australian First Nations communities. Originally designed by Rebecca Barnott-Clement in the role of Digital Preservation Analyst and subsequently supported by Coby Edgar of Agency Projects, the project involved digitisation of archival assets for Bula’Bula Art Centre and the completion of a DPC RAM assessment (a tool to assess an organisation’s digital preservation maturity) for Bula’Bula Art Centre and Milingimbi Art Centre. Watch interview with Rebecca Barnott-Clement Watch the finalist video to find out more

Improving access to and sustainability of the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC)

2024 Winner of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Lisa Griffith and Arif Shaon The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) holds records from 1,370 small languages, mainly audio recordings made since the 1950s. It has 16,000 hours of audio in 230 terabytes of material in 428,000 files stored in Amazon S3. This year’s initiative is to move all items to Research-Object Crate format. RO-Crate allows the whole collection to contain self-describing items so makes it more durable over time, and less reliant on a catalog that is at risk of failure, with consequent metadata loss. This also means they can then be delivered on wifi from a Raspberry Pi device, even in remote offline locations. Watch interview with Julia Miller Watch the finalist video to find out more

Study group Bits and Bots for building digital skills

2024 Winner of the Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications presented by Marjolein Steeman and Matthew Burgess Bits and Bots is a study group teaching digital archivists coding skills, currently focussing on Python and front-end development. The group is open to all and everyone, including the organisers, are learning together as a community instead of in isolation. Digital skills are increasingly important to digital preservation and it is not surprising that “Computer Programming” is listed as one of the skill elements in the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Framework. Coding can be daunting, Bits and Bots tackles this challenge, making learning fun by teaching coding through the creation of games. The community consists of 47 members from 5 continents. Watch interview with Susanne van den Eijkel, Francesca Mackenzie and Lotte Wijsman Watch the finalist video to find out more

Claudia Muñoz with Preservación de documentos digitales: el caso de Wikimedia México / Preservation of digital records: the case of Wikimedia Mexico 

2024 Winner of the CLOCKSS Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation presented by Alicia Wise and Thomas Ledoux Mexican NGOs work on a wide variety of social problems related to technology, gender, violence, and support for social causes. However, their information and history, produced and disseminated in digital formats, are at risk because the organizations lack adequate digital preservation strategies to ensure the permanence and access of their information in the long term, which is aggravated by problems such as the digital divide or lack of budget. Therefore, Wikimedia Mexico, an NGO that promotes free access to knowledge, is taken as an example to establish digital preservation strategies according to its characteristics and context. Watch interview with Claudia Muñoz Watch the finalist video to find out more

NHS research records: Reducing Risk 

2024 Winner of the Research Data Alliance Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector  presented by Hilary Hanahoe and Mihaiela Donisa Barts Health NHS Trust has implemented a specialist digital archive that ensures records from clinical trials are preserved, accessible and usable for their whole retention period (mainly 25 years). This service is now being extended to other NHS Trusts who are finding it difficult to procure an archive themselves; thus helping to preserve data within wider healthcare research and raising awareness of digital preservation in this area. Barts is at the forefront of digital preservation for research study records as this is a complex and challenging environment that is just starting to generate discussion. Watch interview Sandra Blake and Jennifer Dando Watch the finalist video to find out more

DDLD – Living Archive 

2024 winner of the The National Archives (UK) Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy presented by Sonia Ranade and Jo Ana Morfin DDLD – living archive is the first and only repository preserving and cataloguing the work produced by killed journalists in Mexico. Over 163 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2000. However, their work is largely unknown and faces the risk of disappearing, either because it was published in websites that lost their domain with the death of their founders or because their content was taken down from social media. Through the DDLD – living archive, over 19,000 published news pieces from 83 journalists killed in Mexico between 2000 and 2023 have been preserved. Watch interview with Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul Watch the finalist video to find out more

Gladys Kemboi

20244 Winner of the DPC Fellowship Award presented by Barbara Sierman and Nathan Tallman Watch the acceptence video from Gladys Kemboi

Find out more about all of the Digital Preservation Awards 2024 Finalists 

The DPC would like to thank our international panel of judges and all sponsors for their continued support in ensuring the Digital Preservation Awards can continue to recognise and celebrate achievements in the field of digital preservation. 

Watch the Ceremony

In an exciting finale to the Digital Preservation Awards 2022, organisations and practitioners of digital preservation from around the world gathered together for a glittering presentation ceremony on Monday 12th September 2022, at the iPres 2022 conference! Watch the ceremony now:

Meet the Winners

ARCHIVER Project  

2022 Winner of the International Council on Archives Award for Collaboration and Cooperation presented by Meg Phillips and Neil Grindley ARCHIVER is a unique initiative in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) that spent 3 years developing innovative services for Long Term Digital Preservation of scientific datasets. R&D was performed competitively by commercial suppliers, over 3 phases, selecting pilot services led by Arkivum and LIBNOVA, for scientific data archiving and preservation. The R&D was driven by a diverse range of stakeholders including CERN, operating the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, DESY (the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, in Germany), the EMBL-EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute, in Cambridge), and PIC (Port d’Informació Científica, near Barcelona), contributing high-value datasets associated to the EOSC. Watch interview with Joao Fernandes, Matthew Addis and Teo Redondo Watch DPA2022 Winners Webinar on the Archiver Project

The effective preservation of archaeological virtual reconstructions 

2022 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Neil Chue Hong and Kirsty Lingstadt Many different professional communities are currently working on the preservation of complex digital objects, but there is not a unified structure drawing together all the numerous threads around preserving archaeological virtual reconstructions. This PhD programme showed that archaeological virtual reconstructions are a blend of artistic and scientific creativity. These ‘hybrid digital objects’ require delicate care to be preserved effectively in the long term. Thus, when considering a virtual reconstruction project, there are practical aspects that need to be tackled. In addressing these issues, this thesis presents a foundation (preservation framework) for how those various sectors fit together. Watch interview with Panagiotis Papageorgiou Watch DPA2022 Winners Webinar with Panagiotis Papageorgiou

Learning through doing: building digital preservation skills in Wales

2022 Winner of the Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications presented by Remco van Veenendaal and Roxana Maurer The Learning through Doing initiative is rooted in addressing issues arising from digital preservation in a practical way and addressing them collectively. The opportunities presented by the use of platforms such as Teams and Zoom enabled proactive engagement and facilitated connection across Wales. These platforms were used to deliver the Saving the Bits training programme which provided  a general introduction to digital preservation principles and practices for those in the cultural, education and public sectors in Wales. Another element of the initiative addressed the specific issue of remote deposit of digital content to the National Library of Wales, which is in the process of refinement.  Through working with students at Aberystwyth University in a practical workshop, issues identified which were addressed to improve Library processes. Through interactive engagement across Wales, skills and knowledge were built, underpinned  by the resources, community knowledge and training materials  which are freely available through the internet. Watch interview with Sarah Higgins and Sally Mcinnes Watch the DPA2022 Winners Webinar on Learning through Doing

sasha arden with 'Access to Artistic Content on CD-ROMs' 

2022 Winner of the The National Archives (UK) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation presented by April Miller and Lotte Wijsman CD-ROMs completely changed the realm of artistic possibilities in the 1990s, but have you experienced one in the last ten years or so? The answer is likely no, and that is because CD-ROMs are now an obsolete format. This means that CD-ROMs are no longer made or in use. Further, changes in computer hardware, namely the phasing out of optical disc drives, as well as in operating systems like Mac OS 9, have made it impossible to view and experience the contents of existing artist CD-ROMs. Because of these difficulties, an important part of digital art’s history is in limbo. As part of their graduate internship with New York University in 2021-22, sasha worked on access to artist CD-ROMs with Collection Care Research at Tate. Keith Piper’s project Relocating the Remains (1999) served as a case study to explore the technical aspects of how to enable interaction with the CD-ROM contents. Sasha also paid attention to maintaining essential characteristics like color, and behaviors like click reaction times or rollover animations, which can be affected by current methods of access. Their research also considered where artist CD-ROMs sit within Tate’s collections and how that affects discoverability and access, as well as available preservation resources. Watch interview with Sarah Cook who accepted the award on behalf of sasha arden Watch the DPA2022 Winners Webinar with sasha arden

National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation Digital Preservation Program 

2022 Winner of the Research Data Alliance Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector presented by Connie Clare and Karen Sampson The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is devoted to the study of the history and legacy of the Canadian residential school program. In 2020 the NCTR won a $6 million Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant (CFI) to develop a digital preservation program for over four million digital documents and 7,000 recordings of Indigenous testimonies of the history and legacy of the residential school program. The project created a digital infrastructure and workplan for preservation of its digital holdings to make NCTR materials meaningfully available to Indigenous communities in  support of the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples. Watch interview with Emmanuel Modozie Watch the DPA2022 Winners Webinar on the NCTR Digital Preservation Program

Archiving Reproductive Health 

2022 winner of the Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy presented by Kieran O'Leary and Patricia Sleeman The 'Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th' (Archiving Reproductive Health) project aims to provide long-term preservation and access to at-risk born-digital content generated by grassroots women’s reproductive health movements before and during the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution. Funded by Wellcome and administered by the Digital Repository of Ireland, the project is publishing and making available digital collections from activist organisations that otherwise would be lost. The preservation and publication of these collections add significantly to our understanding of women's rights movements and the history of reproductive healthcare in Ireland. Watch interview with Clare Lanigan and Lorraine Grimes Watch the DPA2022 Winners Webinar on the Archiving Reproductive Health Project

PREMIS Data Dictionary and related resources 

2022 winner of the DPC 20th Anniversary Award presented by Kevin Ashley and Edith Halvarsson PREMIS is the de-facto standard for preservation metadata and is today implemented in countless digital preservation systems – open as well as closed source, serving large archives as well as small repositories, supporting end-to-end processes as well as tools for specific tasks. But PREMIS is also much more than metadata: the Data Dictionary is a description of core information about digital objects. It can be used to implement PREMIS, but also to understand digital preservation processes and to benchmark your own solution. Lastly, PREMIS is also an active community as can be seen in countless implementation fairs, tutorials, workshops and discussions around the globe over the past 20 years. Watch interview with the PREMIS team Watch the DPA2022 Winners Webinar with the PREMIS team

Neil Beagrie, Adrian Brown, Dr. Denise de Vries, Nancy Y McGovern, Prof. Zhang Xiaolin

2022 Winners of the DPC Fellowship Award presented by Micky Lindlar and Barbara Sierman Watch interview with Neil Beagrie Watch interview with Adrian Brown Watch the acceptence video from Dr. Denise de Vries, Nancy Y McGovern and Prof. Zhang Xiaolin

Find out more about the Digital Preservation Awards 2022 Finalists 

The DPC would like to thank our international panel of judges and all sponsors for their continued support in ensuring the Digital Preservation Awards can continue to recognise and celebrate achievements in the field of digital preservation. 

The search for the very best work in digital preservation will begin again this year with the Digital Preservation Awards 2024! 

Organized by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) every two years, the prestigious Digital Preservation Awards is the most prominent celebration of achievement for those people and organisations who have made significant contributions towards a sustainable future for our digital assets. 

The exciting process will culminate in a presentation at the iPres 2024 Conference in Ghent on Monday 16th September 2024.

Visit this page again soon for more information about how to participate.

We are very grateful to our sponsors and DPC Supporters for their generous contributions which enable the Digital Preservation Awards to take place:

Category Sponsors

• The International Council on Archives, sponsors of the Award for Collaboration and Cooperation

• The Digital Repository of Ireland, sponsors of the Award for Research and Innovation

• The Dutch Digital Heritage Network (comprising Sound & Vision, National Archives of the Netherlands, KB The National Library of the Netherlands and the International Institute of Social History), sponsors of the Award for Teaching and Communications

• The National Archives (UK), sponsors of the Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy

• CLOCKSS, sponsors of the Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work 

• The Research Data Alliance, sponsors of the Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector

Our DPC Supporters are Bronze Sponsors of the Digital Preservation Awards

Sponsorship opportunities

If your organization would like to sponsor the Digital Preservation Awards please email sarah.middleton@dpconline.org. 

The Digital Preservation Coalition is pleased to announce its international panel of expert judges for 2026:

Matthew Burgess

State Library of New South Wales

Matthew Burgess is a digital preservation specialist focused on standards and practices for managing born-digital collections. As Lead Digital Archivist at the State Library of NSW, he works with internal and external partners to strengthen digital preservation capability and ensure long-term access to digital heritage. He leads the Digital Preservation Network for National and State Libraries Australasia and contributes to regional initiatives of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Gustavo Castener Marquardt

International Council on Archives 

Gustavo Castañer is a professional archivist and records manager. He currently works as Unit Head of Information Resources and Services at the Asian Development Bank (Manila). He has worked previously in archives and records management of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, European Commission, Council of the European Union and European External Action Service, as well as Spanish State Archives and the National Archives of Catalonia. He is especially interested in archives of international organizations, collection outreach, archival education and the use of archives to promote accountability and the defense of Human Rights. Within ICA, he has served previously as Chair of the Section of International Organizations and board member of the Section of Archives and Human Rights.

Fatima Darries

University of South Africa (UNISA)

Fatima leads and manages strategic Library initiatives in research data curation, digitisation of heritage and special collections, digital preservation, and metadata description of commercial and digital information resources at Unisa Library and Information Services. Her career has spanned both client and technical services in the Academic Library Sector. 

She continues to serve as South African country editor on E-LIS, the international archive for Library and related sciences, as well as on the Management and Government Subcommittee of the Digital Preservation Coalition. Previously, Fatima served two terms on the Board of the National Library of South Africa, as well as serving the higher education sector for 10 years as a Board member of HERS SA, a network for women in higher education. She has served in various portfolios in the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA).  Fatima holds a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Cape Town, and graduated in 2024 with the Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation from the University of Maine.

Mihaiela Donisa

Bank for International Settlements 

Mihaiela is the Archivist of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) since 2019, leading projects on digitisation, access and digital preservation of the institutions' collections. The BIS is an international organisation established in 1930 and its mission is to support central banks' pursuit of monetary and financial stability through international cooperation, and to act as a bank for central banks.

Mihaiela holds a MA in Archives and Records Management from UCL and has previously worked in archives and records management roles for European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, BBC and the European Medicines Agency.

Lisa Griffith

Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI)

Lisa Griffith is Director at the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). She has worked at DRI since 2017, holding a range of senior roles including Membership Manager and Programme Manager. Lisa has spoken nationally and internationally on DRI’s work and the topics of digital preservation, archives, and digital Infrastructures. She has contributed to several National Open Research Forum (NORF) committees and served as chair of the NORF PID Strategy Working group from 2023 to 2024. Lisa holds a PhD in history from Trinity College Dublin.

Hilary Hanahoe

Research Data Alliance (RDA)

Hilary serves as Secretary General of the Research Data Alliance and CEO of the RDA Foundation, leading a global community of over 16,000 members across 151 countries. She provides strategic leadership whilst managing operations, cultivating relationships with funders and stakeholders, and ensuring long-term sustainability. Her work centres on stewarding RDA's dynamic volunteer community dedicated to enabling open data sharing and reuse globally, championing the organisation's mission to break down barriers to global data accessibility.

Haliza Jailani

National Library Board Singapore

Previously responsible for the digital infrastructure programme at the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore, Haliza worked on digital preservation early in 2008 implementing Rosetta for NLB and operationalising digital preservation processes.  She is currently Senior Deputy Director of Resource Discovery & Management, overseeing a team of librarians responsible for cataloguing and knowledge organisation systems, including metadata for digital preservation and linked data for discovery.

William Kilbride

Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC)

Executive Director for the DPC, William is the Acting Overall Chair of the Judging Panel. In his current role at the head of the DPC, he provides training and support to members as well as supporting the digital preservation community through advocacy work and enabling strategic partnerships. William is a prolific writer and speaker on the subject of digital preservation and has many years’ experience in the field, having previously held senior positions at Glasgow Museums and the Archaeology Data Service.

Nicola Laurent

Australian Society of Archivists  / University of Melbourne

Nicola Laurent is the Senior Project Archivist on the Find & Connect web resource at the University of Melbourne. Nicola is the President of the Australian Society of Archivists, the International Council on Archives' New Professionals Programme Coordinator and a member of the National Archives of Australia’s Advisory Council. She is also a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at the University of Melbourne undertaking research into the prevalence and impact of trauma in archives. 

Thomas Ledoux

Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)

Thomas is the coordinator of digital production at the Bibliothèque nationale de France / National Library of France (BnF), where he has work as a software engineer for over 25 years. He has always been interested in digital objects, ranging from access on public workstations to his involvement in the BnF's Scalable Preservation & Archiving Repository (SPAR). He regularly collaborates on various open source software, such as Jhove or Archifiltre.

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

World Bank Group

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth earned her Masters of Library Science from the Archives, Records and Information Management Program at the University of Maryland iSchool after a 20-year career as a software developer designing relational databases, creating custom database software and participating in web-based software development. She is the author of Spellbound Blog, where she has published dozens of essays exploring the intersection of archives, technology, metadata, visualization and the web. Jeanne joined the World Bank Group Archives team in 2011. Established in 1945, the World Bank Group is an international organization whose aim is to reduce poverty and promote shared prosperity around the world, and whose archival holdings illuminate the Bank’s engagement with its member countries to promote economic development. In her current role as the Digital Preservation Program Lead, she oversees the Archives Systems and Digital Preservation team and divides her remaining time between strategic planning and hands-on problem solving.

Jenny Mitcham

Digital Preservation Coalition

Jenny Mitcham is Chief Digital Preservation Officer at the Digital Preservation Coalition where she supports the DPC’s Good Practice and Workforce Development strategic objectives. She works closely with the members of the Coalition on their digital preservation challenges, as well as organising events and producing publications and other resources to support the community. She specialises in certification and maturity modelling and has an interest in finding ways of lowering the barriers to digital preservation to those who are just getting started in this field.

Jo Ana Morfin

Ex Teresa Arte Actual, INBAL

Jo Ana, Deputy Director of Ex Teresa Arte Actual, is a conservator of time-based media who works with cultural organizations and small communities of practice in the preservation of contemporary cultural and social legacies rooted in ephemera and obsolete technologies. Her practice focuses on the research and implementation of community-driven methodologies that foster inclusive, ecologically responsible, and socially embedded digital preservation practices.

Sonia Ranade

The National Archives UK

Dr Sonia Ranade is Head of Digital Archiving at The National Archives (UK), with responsibility for services supporting selection and transfer of digital records by UK Government departments, permanent preservation of the digital Public Record and access to born digital records. Her research interests include probabilistic approaches to archival description, digital preservation risk and developing new access routes for digital archives. Sonia holds a PhD in Information Science.

Arif Shaon

Qatar National Library

Arif Shaon is the Head of Digital Curation, Preservation, and Access at Qatar National Library, where he leads the strategic and operational work for the long-term curation, preservation, and accessibility of the library’s digital collections. He has previously held key roles at UNSW Library at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and at the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK, where he led software development and research initiatives in digital preservation, digital curation, and research data management.

Barbara Sierman

DigitalPreservation.nl / DPC Fellow

Barbara Sierman worked from 2005 to 2020 as the digital preservation manager at the Research Department of the KB National Library of the Netherlands. She was active on the Board of the Open Preservation Foundation and the Steering Committee of the IIPC. In 2018, she was awarded the Digital Preservation Coalition Fellowship for her contribution to the field of digital preservation. After her retirement, she founded DigitalPreservation.nl and worked as a consultant on digital preservation topics for various clients such as OPF, NANETH, CTS, DPC and NDE. Currently, she is preparing a publication about the beginning of digital preservation in the European National Libraries.

Marjolein Steeman

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Marjolein works on projects in the area of preservation and metadata, developing and implementing preservation plans for new formats and archive services. She has worked at Beeld & Geluid / Sound & Vision for over 15 years. She studied information science at VU University Amsterdam and worked for years as an expert in data analysis and data management. Among other things, she has worked to secure various catalogs that came to Sound & Vision via merger partners or depositors. As a preservation officer, Marjolein is responsible for the preservation policy of Sound & Vision. She is also a member of the Editorial Committee of PREMIS, the data standard for preservation metadata. In addition to the certification as a sustainable archive (CTS), the ISO certificate for information security (27001) also falls under her care.

Nathan Tallman

Academic Preservation Trust

Nathan Tallman is Executive Director of Academic Preservation Trust where he articulates a vision and executes strategic management for a community-owned distributed digital preservation service. He provides operational oversight of APTrust operations, including the development of plans and processes for the lifecycle of deposited content and the integration of digital preservation processes at existing and prospective APTrust member institutions. Previously, Nathan served as Digital Preservation Librarian and Penn State University and Digital Content Strategist at the University of Cincinnati.

Heather Tompkins

Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 

For the past 18 years, Heather Tompkins has helped shape how Library and Archives Canada (LAC) preserves the country’s digital heritage. As a Senior Project Officer in the Digital Collections and Operations Division, her work includes providing strategic advice on the transfer and processing of digital records, contributing to policy development, and establishing LAC’s Pre‑Ingest procedures. After serving as a judge for the 2024 awards, Heather is excited to return for 2026 to celebrate the outstanding new work underway and to recognize the people who make it possible.

Benjamin Turkus

New York Public Library

Biography to follow soon 

Jessica Venlet

National Digital Stewardship Alliance 

Jessica Venlet works as the Project Manager for Digital Repository Technology at the University of Michigan Library. In this role, she is responsible for facilitating and coordinating the planning and implementation of digital repository systems that meet the library's digital preservation and access goals.

Jaye Weatherburn

University of Melbourne 

Jaye Weatherburn is Head of Digital Preservation at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Her work spans digital preservation strategy, operating model design, digital archiving practice, and the stewardship of complex digital heritage. She has led digital preservation programs and contributes to sector-wide collaboration and community development. Jaye is co-author of Preserving Digital Materials, 3rd edition (2018).y.

Elżbieta Wysocka

National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA)

Elżbieta Wysocka is a restorer and researcher specializing in film, video and digital art. She has led national and international projects in film restoration, digitisation, cataloguing and digital preservation at the at the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA). She also guided the development of the Media Asset Management system and the digital preservation strategy at FINA. A member of the FIAF Cataloguing and Documentation Commission, she also worked as film restorer at Deutsche Kinemathek (FFE Program). Since October 2024, she has been Director of Digital Collections and Digitisation at FINA.

Entrants for the Digital Preservation Awards must submit a nomination by 09:00 (UTC) on Thursday 23 April 2026 (see ‘How to Enter' for details).
Nominations are evaluated, and finalists decided by the Digital Preservation Judging Panel Meeting in May 2026.

Once announced, finalists will then be required to do the following:

• Submit a 3-minute lightning video outlining the key elements of the initiative. More details will be provided at this stage.

• With the exception of the Student Award, attend an online interview with the Judging Panel week commencing 13th July 2026, explaining the importance of the initiative the field of digital preservation.

• Provide good quality visual material – at least three hi-res jpeg images (e.g., project team, location shots, screen shots, products) – of the project to be used in publicity material relating to the Award and/or the Awards ceremony.

Only finalists will be asked for full details of their projects.

The following gives an outline of key dates. Dates will be finalized and agreed at the earliest opportunity.

  We are very grateful to our sponsors and DPC Supporters for their generous contributions which enable the Digital Preservation Awards to take place:

If your organization would like to sponsor the Digital Preservation Awards please email angela.puggioni@dpconline.org. 

Scope

• The Judges will assume a broad definition of digital preservation: projects which describe themselves with specialist terms like ‘conservation’, ‘continuity’, ‘curation’, ‘legacy’, ‘permanent accessibility’, ‘sustainment’ or ‘sustainability’ will be eligible so long as they can demonstrate that they are working towards a sustainable future for our digital assets. Typically, digitization projects will not be eligible unless they offer a specific deliverable that will improve long term access to the digital estate. The Judges’ decision will be final, and no discussion will be entered into.

Deadline

• There will be no extensions to the deadline.

Who can apply? 

• The awards are open to all. They seek to include entries from all organization types, across all sectors – public, private, for-profit, and non-profit and nominees do not need to be members of the DPC. The awards are international in scope and the project may have been carried out anywhere in the world; Judges will be looking to see how results and lessons learned are being shared with the wider digital preservation community so that they may also learn from the efforts undertaken. Nominations must be supported by senior management within your institution and nominations based on an external grant or commission should be supported by the grant giving agency or commissioning agent. Joint nominations are welcome from individuals or teams working in the public or private sectors, though a single point of contact must be agreed. There is no fee to enter the Digital Preservation Awards.

Do I need support from my manager? 

• Yes. The purpose of the Digital Preservation Awards is about raising awareness about digital preservation. By seeking the approval of management, we are asking you to undertake a modest amount of internal advocacy. For the purposes of the student award, the course convener or head of department is effectively the senior manager. Please address your letter of Support to the Judging Panel.

Why is there a timeframe? 

• The Awards are given for initiatives that were completed between 1st August 2024 and 31st July 2026 which is the period since the last Digital Preservation Awards, though Judges will be asked to use their discretion in the admittance of nominations which have been completed outside that period. NB: although the completion date should fall between the dates given, work may have begun at any date.

What can we submit? 

• Any project or initiative which has contributed towards a sustainable future for our digital assets. By ‘project’ we mean any sustained and unified effort that works towards a discrete and definitive outcome. This might include the development and delivery of innovative services or a single program of work. Pilot projects and full-scale projects can be submitted though nominees may wish to signal the relationship between them. Combinations of projects which happen to operate in the same sphere, but which have no structural linkage should be avoided and large or complex projects are encouraged to concentrate on specific deliverables which can be more readily understood. Small projects with modest outcomes are particularly encouraged to apply because impact will be assessed in proportion to the total resource expended. 

Can I use AI tools to help draft or translate my nomination?

• Yes but for transparency you must tell us what tools you used and how you used them.

Will you supply travel grants?  

• We are currently fundraising for this and will confirm once we get closer.  Nominees wishing to attend the NTTW Conference must register for this separately, fees for attending the conference will not be covered.

Will you give feedback about our nomination? 

• Yes. All nominees get feedback from the Judges and shortlisted candidates will also receive feedback from their peers gathered from the public vote. The feedback will always be constructive, and the Judges encourage nominees to append these comments to their professional and organizational CVs.

Can we promote the fact that we have submitted a nomination, been shortlisted or have won an award? 

• Yes, we actively encourage you to do so. Where possible we will help you by providing supportive quotes or photography and will make time for press calls. The awards are run to engage the widest possible community in digital preservation, so we call on everyone interested in the awards to help raise their profile.

Can I ask your advice about completing my nomination form? 

• Yes, but we reserve the right to publish that advice on the FAQ section of the Digital Preservation Awards Website to ensure that any points of clarification are available to all. We will keep such advice anonymous. There is a comment function on the FAQ section of the website that you can use to ask questions.

Can I nominate someone for the DPC Fellowship Award? 

• DPC members will be formally invited to submit their nominations for the Fellowship Award with the online vote in June 2026. In response to this invitation, members should include their nominations as part of the voting card, or email their nominations to angela.puggioni@dpconline.org and we will collate a list for the Judges’ consideration in July. At this stage, the Judges will also submit their own nominations if not already made and a winner will be decided by the Judges only, from this list. The winner of the Fellowship Award will be decided upon by the Judging Panel from this list of names.

Did this page answer your question? If not, please email angela.puggioni@dpconline.org for further information.

Applications

This page explains how to submit a nomination for the Digital Preservation Awards 2026, what information you will need to provide, and the general provisions that apply across all categories.

All nominees should read the Nomination Pack (DPA26A) before preparing their nomination. Nominations must be submitted using the online submission form (DPA26B). An offline version of the nomination form (DPA26B) is also available below as a checklist, so that you can prepare all required information before completing the online form.

What your nomination must include:

• An indication of the awards category for which the nomination is being made.

Please indicate the awards category for which the nomination is being made. The same nomination may be made to multiple categories if the criteria is fully met for each. Please note that Judges reserve the right to move nominations into the category they think fits best. 

• A brief summary of the project of no more than 100 words. This wording will be used on publicity material and should be as concise and clear as possible.

The summary text should be written for a lay audience and as accessible as possible – imagine it being reproduced in a newspaper report of winning the award. This is likely to be included on the website and in other communications if you are selected as a finalist.

• A project description of no more than 1000 words, setting out the nature and purpose of the project, and why it is considered to be a potential Award-winner. The project should demonstrate leadership and advancement in the digital preservation arena.

This longer, more detailed text will be used by DPC members and the Judges to assess nominations in the members’ vote. It is in this description that nominations should be more expansive and assume more knowledge, bearing in mind the diversity of the Coalition and its partners. You may include images and diagrams, although these should be genuine visual aids that help clarify the concepts described in the text. An over-abundance of diagrams may be considered suggestive of a text that needs to be improved.

Diagrams are not included in the word count. You may also include hyperlinks, although please note that the Judges are instructed to assess nominations purely on the merits of the evidence presented to them in the nomination forms (and for finalists, in the subsequent interview). Therefore, you should not require Judges to follow a hyperlink or expect that they will.

Information included in Section four: Supporting Statements can and should be repeated in the Long Description as the two have different functions. The Judges will have access to the complete nomination form and therefore any text repeated between the two. However, finalists will be presented to a vote of the members of the DPC and voters will be given the long description as part of the ballot paper without the supporting statements from Section Four. Furthermore, it is our expectation that our designated contacts in DPC members will cascade the long descriptions through their own organizations so that the vote is cast as a corporate decision. Therefore, we recommend that the long description is written for a lay audience.

Bear in mind when writing both the Summary and Long Description that:

a) the DPC will receive a large number of applications and so good writing will help your application stand out; and

b) Judges come from a range of backgrounds including technology experts, business managers, archivists and academics. Whilst expert in their own fields they may not be expert in dealing with your concerns. It will therefore help the nomination if you are clear and concise with your language.

• A brief account of how the nomination meets each of the key criteria 

• Up to three images good quality illustrating the project/team or individuals are requested. These may also be used for publicity at finalist stage.

Examples of good images to be included are: team photos, project logos, location shots, photos of any products associated with the nominations – particularly in use, process diagrams (without too much text). These should be provided as hi-res jpegs.

• The nomination should also be accompanied by a letter of support from a senior manager within the institution.

The reason we seek senior management approval is to allow for appropriate internal advocacy and, to a lesser extent, to ensure we do not receive competing nominations from the same institution or project. A senior manager may be anyone within your organization’s management team, in a position more senior than your own. The letter could be a scanned copy of referral or an email – as long as the senior manager in question is made aware of your work and is happy to support it. 

The Judges have been very clear in welcoming all kinds of applications, including personal contributions undertaken outside of an institutional framework. Therefore, the absence of a letter of support should not become a barrier to submission e.g., in the case that the project was undertaken in a personal capacity, with no institutional affiliation.

Please use the offline form DPA26B for a checklist of items you will need to enter the awards and come to the online submission form with all the information you need prepared, and to hand.

Submission deadline

Please submit your nomination before the deadline of 09:00 (UTC) on Thursday 23 April 2026.

General Provisions

The following provisions apply across all categories of the Awards: 

• The judges’ decisions are final

• Any attempts to influence the judges will result in disqualification

• All nominations must be submitted on the relevant nomination form

• The judging criteria published for each award are for guidance: the conditions are not negotiable

• With the exception of the student award, institutions are welcome to make multiple nominations, even if these end up in competition with each other. The judges welcome the opportunity to judge between them.

• Where appropriate, a nomination can be submitted against multiple categories provided a convincing case is made.

• The judges may change the category of a nomination.

• Judges may not lead nominations. They must declare their interests at the start of each meeting and must leave the room during consideration of the relevant nominations.

• The staff of the DPC cannot apply, and contractors cannot nominate work which was initiated and funded directly by the DPC.

• Projects involving the DPC and DPC staff can be nominated but DPC activities must not be the reason for the nomination.

• The DPC will only name finalists. Nominations will remain confidential.

• All nominees will receive feedback.

• Details of finalists will be used only for the purposes of publicizing the Awards. By submitting a form, nominees signify their consent to such publicity.

Watch the ceremony

Watch the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony, filmed live on 30th November 2016 at the Wellcome Collection, London.

Meet the Winners

NCDD and NDE, ‘Constructing a network of nationwide facilities together.’

2016 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation, presented by Neil Chue Hong, SSI and Dave Tarrant, ODI To achieve cross-domain collaboration and to create a network of nationwide facilities, a practical framework has been developed in The Netherlands for public organisations that ensure sustained access to digital information. Based on realistic and achievable scenarios, these organisations and their clients can now make well-founded policy choices, rearrange resources, and better designate responsibilities on a national scale. Carefully avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach, the strategy is based on differentiation between do-mains while achieving economies of scale and other efficiencies by sharing jointly facilities and ser-vices where possible. Watch interview with Joost van der Nat and Barbara Sierman

The National Archives and The Scottish Council on Archives: ‘Transforming Archives/Opening Up Scotland’s Archives.’

2016 Winner of the NCDD Award for Teaching and Communications, presented by Marcel Ras, NCDD and Margriet van Gorsel, Dutch National Archives These HLF-supported programmes jointly offer 55 practical year-long traineeships (of which 37 fall into the qualifying period), hosted at 26 archives across England and Scotland 2014-17. Our aim is to transform the archives workforce, bringing people with specialist skills (including strong IT qualifications and experience) into the heritage sector and offering alternative pathways to careers in archives. Trainees focus on a variety of skills but many take a bespoke ‘Introduction to Digitisation and Digital Preservation’ module at University of Dundee, to ensure our new workforce starts out with awareness of the critical importance of the emerging digital challenges in archives.   Watch interview with Audrey Wilson, Emma Stagg and Victoria Brown

Anthea Seles, University College London and ‘The Transferability of Trusted Digital Repository Standards to an East African context. 

2016 Winner of the DPC Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation, presented by Daniela Duca, Jisc and Steve Daly, BBC Digital preservation is a topic that has been extensively explored over the last thirty years in the fields of archival and information studies. However, relatively little literature has touched on the topic of Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs). A TDR is '[A]n archive, consisting of an organization of people and systems that has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community.’1 Standards governing TDRs, namely the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and Repository Audit and Certification (RAC), have been designed and tested by developed nations with minimal reference to the developing world. Little attempt has been made to question whether these standards, entirely developed in one context, are actually transferable or applicable to another. There is an assumption, however, that because these standards have been generalised, they are ubiquitous and robust, transferable to any locale. This thesis seeks to question the basic assumptions that are made when standards or best practice created in the developed world are applied to different contexts outside of the original milieu of elaboration. Further, this thesis considers the applicability of TDRs to the Eastern African archival context. Using threefold mimesis, the study examines the standards development process, identifying underlying socio-economic, cultural, infrastructural, educational and other presumptions that may exist in the documented standards. It also examines whether these biases impact on the applicability and transferability of standards to Eastern Africa. Watch interview with Anthea Seles

HSBC, ‘Global Digital Archive System (GDA)' 

2016 Winner of the DPC Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Industry, presented by Tim Gollins, National Records of Scotland and Sharon McMeekin, DPC HSBC’s Global Digital Archive system launched in January 2015. It combines a synchronised Preservica digital repository, with discrete Calm archival management catalogues covering Asia, Europe and North America. This holistic approach to collections management and digital preservation merges ingest and preservation workflows with strong search capabilities, enabling the archivists to curate physical assets, digital copies and born‐digital records on a global basis. The project was successful in demonstrating to ‘big business’ that preservation technology is a truly specialist requirement – separate to traditional document management. It also navigated numerous information security risks posed in a commercially sensitive and highly regulated environment. Watch interview with James Mortlock

Amsterdam Museum and Partners, ‘The Digital City revives: A case study of web archaeology.’ 

2016 Winner of the National Archives Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy, presented by John Sheridan, The National Archives and Louise Lawson, Tate On 15 January 1994 De Digitale Stad (DDS; The Digital City) opened its virtual gates. DDS, the first virtual city worldwide, made the internet (free) accessible for the first time to the general public in the Netherlands. In 2001 The Digital City, the website, was taken offline. Our digital heritage, and especially the digital memory of the early web, is at risk of being lost. Or worse already gone. In the case study of web archaeology we will answer the questions: how to excavate, reconstruct, preserve and sustainably store born-digital heritage (DDS) and make it accessible to future generations? Watch interview with Tjarda de Haan and Erwin Verbruggen

Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive 

Digital Preservation Awards 2016 Finalists 

The DPC extends grateful thanks to our international panel of Judges and all of our sponsors who made DPA2016 a possibility:

Watch the ceremony

Watch the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony, filmed live in November 2018 at the Amsterdam Museum in the Netherlands.

Meet the Winners

Stanford University Libraries, ePADD 

2018 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Neil Chue Hong, SSI and Natalie Harrower, Digital Repository of Ireland ePADD is free and open source software developed by Stanford University Libraries and partners that supports the appraisal, processing, preservation, discovery, and delivery of email archives of potential historical or cultural value. Over the past five years, ePADD has pioneered the application of machine learning and natural language processing to confront challenges that collection donors, archivists, and researchers routinely face in donating, administering, preserving, or accessing email collections. This includes screening email for confidential, restricted, or legally-protected information, preparing email for preservation, and making the resulting files (which incorporates preservation actions taken by the repository) discoverable and accessible to researchers. Watch interview with Josh Schneider Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on ePADD

Jennifer Allen, Matthew Farrell, Shira Peltzman, Alice Prael and Dorothy Waugh; The Archivist’s Guide to Kryoflux 

2018 Winner of the DPC Award for Teaching and Communications, presented by Sally McInnes, National Library of Wales and Neil Grindley, Jisc For archivists preserving and providing access to data stored on floppy disks, the KryoFlux offers significant benefits. This floppy disk controller supports a variety of legacy encoding formats, effectively handles degraded data, and creates bit-for-bit disk images suitable for long-term preservation. Unfortunately, existing documentation for the KryoFlux is scant and assumes a level of technical knowledge largely absent from archival literature and curricula. The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux is a manual designed to fill that gap. Written specifically for archivists, it provides clear instructions for practitioners using the KryoFlux to support the preservation of important cultural heritage data. Watch interview with Dorothy Waugh Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on Archivists Guide to the Kryoflux

Anna Oates; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

2018 Winner of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation, presented by Laura Mitchell, NRS and Laura Molloy, University of Oxford The PDF/A standard is a component of many institutional repository file format policies. However, full conformance with the standard is often difficult to achieve for born-digital documents. This paper presents findings from trial migrations/normalization to PDF/A of student papers held in the Oxford University Research Archive. The study tested multiple PDF/A creation software and format validation tools in use by institutions. It further presents findings from interviews with institutional repository staff currently using the standard within their workflows. With these datasets as its basis, the paper identifies common occurrences of non-conformances with the PDF/A standard and discusses to what extent these non-conformances present preservation risks. Watch interview with Anna Oates Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar with Anna Oates

Crossrail and Transport for London; Archiving Crossrail 

2018 Winner of the Open Data Institute (ODI) Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector, presented by David Beardmore, ODI and Sheila Morrissey, Portico The Crossrail Act giving permission for what is now called the Elizabeth Line to be built operated and maintained received Royal Assent in July 2008. Over the next 10 years Europe’s biggest infrastructure project at £14.8 billion has integrated the information developed from over 25 main design contracts, 30 advanced work contracts and 60+ logistics and main works contracts. Crossrail embraced BIM (Building Information Modelling) with a single set of linked applications shared with contractors across all phases of the project. The challenge for the archive team was to preserve a heavily interlinked dataset without having to retain legacy software. Watch interview with Alastair Goodall Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on Archiving Crossrail

IFI Irish Film Archive; IFI Loopline Project 

2018 Winner of the National Archives Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy, presented by Valerie Johnson, The National Archives and Neil Jefferies Frustrated by budget constraints & unresponsive commercial vendors the IFI Irish Film Archive was inspired by the FLOSS community to develop a suite of 55 open source scripts (IFIScripts) that support our digital preservation activities in a sustainable and efficient manner. Solving problems in-house has reduced our maintenance costs and vendor fees and allowed us to take control of our preservation workflows. Not only has IFIScripts helped us to fulfil our digital preservation remit within our limited staff and financial resources, but we sharing all our tools with the preservation community on Githib for others to use and adapt. We are currently completing our first end- to- end application of the IFI Scripts on a preservation projection for a collection of material from a leading Irish film production company called Loopline Films. Watch interview with Kasandra O'Connell and Kieran O'Leary Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on the IFI Irish Film Archive Loopline Project

Barbara Sierman

2018 Winner of the DPC Fellowship Award, presented by Richard Ovenden, Bodleian Libraries        Watch interview with Barbara Sierman

The Digital Preservation Awards 2018 Finalists 

The Software Sustainability Institute Award for Research and Innovation ePADD, University of Stanford VeraPDF, Open Preservation Foundation Contributions towards Defining the Discipline, Sarah Higgins - Aberystwyth University Flashback: Preservation of legacy digital collections, British Library	The DPC Award for Teaching and Communications Evidence-­based postgraduate education in digital information management, University College Dublin Leren Preserveren (Learning Digital Preservation), Digital Heritage Network and Het Nieuwe Instituut Ibadan/Liverpool Digital Curation Curriculum Review Project, Universities of Ibadan and Liverpool The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux, Universities of Texas, Duke, Los Angeles, Yale and Emory
The National Records of Scotland Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation 'Navigating the PDF/A Standard: A Case Study of Theses' by Anna Oates, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 'Preserving the past: the challenge of digital archiving within a Scottish Local Authority' by Lorraine Murray, University of Glasgow 'Essay on the record-making and record-keeping issues implicit in Wearables' by Philippa Turner, University of Liverpool	The Open Data Institute Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third sector Music Treasures, Stichting Omroep Muziek (SOM) Archiving Crossrail - Europe’s largest infrastructure project, Crossrail and Transport for London Heritage preservation of contemporary dance and choreography through research and innovation in digital documentation and annotation of creative processes, ICKamsterdam and Motion Bank
The National Archives Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy IFI Open Source tools: IFIscripts/ Loopline project, IFI Irish Film Archive Cloud-Enabled Preservation of Life in the 20th Century White House, White House Historical Association Digital Library Design, Deliver, Embed: Establishing Digital Transfer in Parliament, UK Parliamentary Archives Local Authority Digital Preservation Consortium: Dorset History Centre, West Sussex Records Office, Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre In the category of 'Safeguarding the Digital Legacy' The judges also offered a special commendation to the GI Press Collection

The DPC extends grateful thanks to our international panel of Judges and all of our sponsors who made the Digital Preservation Awards 2018 a possibility: