Issues
Browse the Knowledge Base by a cross section of legal, organisational and technical issues such as File Format Obsolescence, Procurement or Metadata.
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Articles
EPISODE 2: Digital Preservation Futures with Arkivum
This series of webinars will showcase the product and service offerings of each of our DPC Supporters in turn, before the DPC staff invite speakers to respond on a series of themes which represent our understanding of member interests.
EPISODE 1: Digital Preservation Futures with LIBNOVA
This series of webinars will showcase the product and service offerings of each of our DPC Supporters in turn, before the DPC staff invite speakers to respond on a series of themes which represent our understanding of member interests.
Digital Preservation Workflows Webinar Series and COW-a-thon event
Recordings of Workflows Webinar Series (DPC Members please login to view) 20th April, 1300 - 1430 (UK) Episode 1: Preparations and ingest Business planning with Jaye Weatherburn, University of Melbourne {!guest} {/guest} Pre-ingest checks and ingest preparation for digital legal deposit material with Roxana Maurer, Bibliotheque nationale du Luxembourg {!guest} {/guest} Ingest to Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) with Fabi Barticioti, LSE...
DPC RAM (version 2) - what has changed and why?
This week, version 2 of DPC RAM, our Rapid Assessment Model was launched (including a new DPC RAM logo courtesy of Sharon McMeekin). This blog post describes what has changed and why. When DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model was first launched in September 2019 we were aware that future revisions would be required to keep it up-to-date. In an evolving field like digital preservation, good practice develops over time and the models by which we measure ourselves should also change...
DPC RAM (version 2) - what has changed and why?
This week, version 2 of DPC RAM, our Rapid Assessment Model was launched (including a new DPC RAM logo courtesy of Sharon McMeekin). This blog post describes what has changed and why. When DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model was first launched in September 2019 we were aware that future revisions would be required to keep it up-to-date. In an evolving field like digital preservation, good practice develops over time and the models by which we measure ourselves should also change...
Previous Versions of DPC RAM
Previous versions of DPC Rapid Assessment Model are available below: Version 1 Version 1 (2019) - The DPC Rapid Assessment Model - the full model and worksheet The first version of DPC RAM was officially launched in September 2019 in the Lightning Talks session of the iPRES conference in Amsterdam and with the following blog post: Introducing the DPC RAM Version 1 translations: Français - Grille d'évaluation rapide (French) 日本語 - デジタル保存連合 ラピッド・アセスメントモデル...
It’s not easy being green: Evaluating the impact of digital preservation
Elisabeth Thurlow is the Digital Preservation & Access Manager at the University of the Arts London. As we challenge the long-held myth of neutrality within libraries, museums and archives, and diversify our collections, how do we avoid making decisions in support of digital preservation, which risk reinforcing historic biases? How do we select and prioritise our preservation actions whilst ensuring we are not duplicating existing biases? As well as the potential social impact of...
DPC RAM Webinar
Having a clear idea of the current state of your digital preservation capabilities can greatly aid how you plan to enhance your capacity and operations. The DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) is a digital preservation maturity modelling tool that has been designed to enable rapid benchmarking of an organisation’s digital preservation capability. The DPC invites everyone interested in benchmarking their digital preservation capabilities to attend this webinar, which will include an...
Is digital preservation bad for the environment? Reflections on environmentally sustainable digital preservation in the cloud
Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. Concerns are frequently raised that the way that humanity generates and uses data is simply not environmentally sustainable and is a significant contributor to greenhouse emissions and climate change. Archives and other organisations who hold and provide access to digital content are justifiably concerned about the part they play and how they can be more environmentally sustainable.
Digital Preservation Procurement Toolkit v2.0
Use this to help deliver a successful procurement of third party digital preservation services or infrastructure This Toolkit does not aim to provide a guide to procurement itself, but instead to provide advice on how to get the best result possible out of a procurement process with a minimum of pain. It has been designed primarily for DPC Members who are procuring services, but it will also provide benefits to DPC Supporters by improving communication, clarity and efficiency throughout a...
COVID-19: The duty to document does not cease in a crisis, it becomes more essential
[French and Spanish versions follow] We, the signatories of this statement, call on governments, businesses, and research institutions around the world to document their decisions and transactions now and for the future. Building on the UNESCO communique ‘Turning the threat of COVID-19 into an opportunity for greater support to documentary heritage’ and reinforcing the call that decision-makers in the public and private sectors recognise the value of records management and...
Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation: some thoughts
On Friday last week the DPC hosted a webinar on ‘Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation’. We were delighted to be able to get all four authors of a recent article in American Archivist in the (virtual) room together with our Members to discuss this important topic. The article is available here and I’d urge digital preservation people everywhere to read it if you haven’t already. I joked within the webinar last week that I wished I’d written it myself...but I should also note that...
Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation: some thoughts
On Friday last week the DPC hosted a webinar on ‘Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation’. We were delighted to be able to get all four authors of a recent article in American Archivist in the (virtual) room together with our Members to discuss this important topic. The article is available here and I’d urge digital preservation people everywhere to read it if you haven’t already. I joked within the webinar last week that I wished I’d written it myself...but I should also note that...
Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation - Webinar
The cultural heritage community has engaged with environmental sustainability in many areas, but is only beginning to explore the sustainability concerns of digital preservation activities. Building off of a recent American Archivist article (“Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation”), in which the authors argue that truly sustainable practice will come only from critical examination of the underlying motivations and assumptions of current digital preservation practices, the...
Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Preservation - Webinar
The cultural heritage community has engaged with environmental sustainability in many areas, but is only beginning to explore the sustainability concerns of digital preservation activities. Building off of a recent American Archivist article (“Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation”), in which the authors argue that truly sustainable practice will come only from critical examination of the underlying motivations and assumptions of current digital preservation practices, the...
From ‘starting digital preservation’ to ‘business as usual’
Anna McNally is Senior Archivist at University of Westminster in the UK The University of Westminster’s Records and Archives team manage the institutional records of the University (founded in 1838), alongside the deposited records of several architects and town planners, and a garment collection (the Westminster Menswear Archive). We started actively managing digital records in 2016 but, in a relatively fast-paced area (compared with paper records!), it’s hard not to always think...
PREMIS News & Highlights for 2019
Karin Bredenberg is Chair of the PREMIS Editorial Committee. She works for Kommunalförbundet Sydarkivera/The Municipality Organisation Sydarkivera in Sweden. 2019 has been a very productive year for the PREMIS Editorial Committee! We’ve welcomed several new members to the EC this year and have made significant progress in various areas. The release a year ago of the PREMIS 3.0 OWL Ontology led the EC into discussions regarding the relationship between the ontology and the PREMIS Data...
Introducing the DPC RAM
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.” Martin Robb, National Programme Manager, NDA I’ve heard this phrase several times since starting work on a digital preservation project with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority here in the UK. Colleagues at the NDA were very keen that as part of our two year project with them, we found an appropropriate way of measuring where they are now in their digital preservation journey and establishing a clear direction of travel. Maturity...
Level up with DPC RAM
The DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model is a helpful tool for assessing an organization’s maturity with digital preservation. It allows you to consider both where you are currently and where you would like to be, and highlight gaps in your current digital preservation capacity. This resource is designed to help you work out how to address those gaps and move up the levels of RAM. For each of the 11 sections of RAM there are helpful tips, links to useful resources and case studies...
The 'Capstone' email appraisal approach
Alexander Roberts is Digital Humanities Manager/Research Data Manager at Swansea University and attended iPRES2018 with support from the DPC's Leadership Programme which is generously funded by DPC Supporters Welcome to my second blog post relating to themes and projects which sparked my imagination as a result of attending iPres2018, the international digital preservation conference, last September in Boston, USA. As I mentioned in my previous blog post discussing...