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
DPC Reading Club: a radical empathy approach to disk imaging
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...
Time to get yourself N2KH-ready!
The newest training course in the Novice-to-Know-How series (N2KH) will be available soon. If you haven’t done the original N2KH Learning Pathway yet, now is the time! You might have already heard: for the past 4 months The National Archives in the UK and the Digital Preservation Coalition have been busy developing a new online training course on email preservation. The training is the latest in the digital preservation learning pathway “Novice to Know-How” and will be launched in June...
Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit 2.0 now available!
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is relaunching an updated version of the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit to coincide with the start of a week-long Relaunch Roadshow in Australasia this week. Focused on digital preservation activities, the Toolkit provides a guide to writing a business case and starts with factors to consider whilst planning your case, before offering templates and a step-by-step guide to drafting, construction and delivery. “There is no perfect...
FDO2022 Conference – human and social factors in data and metadata management
Louise Preston is a Project Officer at the National Archives of Australia. She attended FDO2022 with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Writing systems developed in Mesopotamia and other ancient societies to manage information because human memory simply could not store all information. It was a new and specialised field that began with only partial script. As writing and recording became more complex, the amount of information stored...
Call for Applicants: DPC Grant for 2023 AMaGA Conference in Australia
The DPC is pleased to offer a new Career Development Fund grant for the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA) National Conference 2023 (#AMaGA2023), being held 16-19 May across Murrook Cultural Centre, Newcastle City Hall and Civic Theatre in Awabakal & Worimi Land Newcastle, Australia. The grant will cover 100% of the registration fees as well as a contribution towards travel and accommodation. More details about the grant are provided below, and applications are welcomed...
File format recommendations - I wouldn’t say they are unacceptable, but I wouldn’t recommend them either
Last week I joined a webinar entitled “A Comparison of Recommended File Formats and the New Dutch Method for File Format Assessment”. It’s great to see the outcomes of this collaborative work, and it’s clear that it has already played an important role in bringing out some key themes in the preservation approaches of various organizations. But I felt that a number of aspects give cause for concern. The collation of file format policies has highlighted some approaches that I believe should be...
File format recommendations - I wouldn’t say they are unacceptable, but I wouldn’t recommend them either
Last week I joined a webinar entitled “A Comparison of Recommended File Formats and the New Dutch Method for File Format Assessment”. It’s great to see the outcomes of this collaborative work, and it’s clear that it has already played an important role in bringing out some key themes in the preservation approaches of various organizations. But I felt that a number of aspects give cause for concern. The collation of file format policies has highlighted some approaches that I believe should be...
Tapping the (Open) Source – No Time To Wait 2022
Nigel Bryant is Audiovisual Digitisation Officer at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. He recently attended No Time To Wait 6 with support from a travel grant from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. As part of my role, I am constantly striving to improve processes and workflow for the preservation of AV materials. I am currently implementing an open source workflow employing the Matroska (.mkv) video format, ideally using entirely Free and Open...
Notes After Attending the 2022 FIAF Film Restoration Summer School
Natalia Bianchi is a Digitisation Technician working with time-based media in the Access Team at Imperial War Museum. She attended the FIAF Film Restoration Summer School this year with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Even if film archives and cultural heritage institutions around the world are aware of the comprehensive film preservation policies that should be put in place, many analogue film collections are slowly deteriorating over...
DPC shares French translations of two Technology Watch Guidance Notes on World Digital Preservation Day
[Une version française suit] Adding to a range of other translated resources, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is delighted to share translations of two Technology Watch Guidance Notes: Preserving Databases and Developing an Access Strategy for Born Digital Archival Material. Now available in French, the Technology Watch Guidance Notes complement the DPC’s popular Technology Watch Report series and are designed to be a ‘bite-sized’ papers containing information about the specific...
Title: Preservation Digitisation Project – Digitising the Tasmanian Archives audio visual collection
Karin Haveman is Acting Manager Government Archives and Preservation at the Tasmanian Archives and Digitisation Services Coordinator In February 2021, Libraries Tasmania launched the Preservation Digitisation Project – a major collaborative project that brings together Digitisation Services, System Support and Delivery, Government Archives, and the Community Archives teams. The aim of this project is to digitise our Tasmanian film, sound, and video collections for long-term...
Funding digital preservation skills development
Natalie Baur is Program Director for DPOE-N Happy World Digital Preservation Day from your colleagues at the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N)! We are excited to celebrate this important day with you, and we wanted to share some of our resources and funding opportunities that are available to the community. DPOE-N was created by the Library of Congress in 2010 to provide digital preservation training across the U.S. The program transitioned to...
Digital preservation at the National Library of Australia
Libor Coufal is Assistant Director for Digital Preservation at the National Library of Australia We are very mindful that it has been (not quite all, but mostly) quiet on the NLA communication front in the last several years, while we have busily worked on implementing our digital preservation program. Our attendance at this year’s iPres (our first since 2014) was a great opportunity to pause and reflect on the progress we have made. We would like to update the community on what we have...
Digital preservation at the National Library of Australia
Libor Coufal is Assistant Director for Digital Preservation at the National Library of Australia We are very mindful that it has been (not quite all, but mostly) quiet on the NLA communication front in the last several years, while we have busily worked on implementing our digital preservation program. Our attendance at this year’s iPres (our first since 2014) was a great opportunity to pause and reflect on the progress we have made. We would like to update the community on what we have...
Memories from the Anthropocene: digital preservation in a time of climate crisis
In October 2022 I was privileged to join colleagues virtually for an event organized by UNISA in Pretoria, South Africa. The event marked International Open Access Week 2022 and had the title 'Open for Climate Justice'. This blog is a version of the paper that I presented. (Added 1/11/2022: The slides are available from UnisaIR at https://hdl.handle.net/10500/29530) Thankyou very much for the invitation to join you today to share some thoughts about the relationship between...
Memories from the Anthropocene: digital preservation in a time of climate crisis
In October 2022 I was privileged to join colleagues virtually for an event organized by UNISA in Pretoria, South Africa. The event marked International Open Access Week 2022 and had the title 'Open for Climate Justice'. This blog is a version of the paper that I presented. (Added 1/11/2022: The slides are available from UnisaIR at https://hdl.handle.net/10500/29530) Thankyou very much for the invitation to join you today to share some thoughts about the relationship between...
DPC Competency Framework Public Launch
The DPC welcomes members of the digital preservation community to join them for the public launch of their new Digital Preservation Competency Framework and accompanying resources. The DPC’s new Competency Framework has been designed to identify the key competencies required to undertake successful digital preservation, whilst being flexible enough to be used for a variety of purposes, such as structuring professional development, aiding recruitment, and assessing curricula. The Framework...
iPRES 2022: Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability
Matthew Addis is Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. One area that stood out for me at iPRES this year was the thread of climate change and environmental sustainability that weaved its way through several parts of the conference. In the panel session called ‘”IT'S ALL IMPORTANT OF COURSE, BUT…”, which hotly debated the question of what is the most important challenge in digital preservation (costs, advocacy, and people all came high up the list, and rightly so), I think it was Keith...
iPRES 2022: Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability
Matthew Addis is Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. One area that stood out for me at iPRES this year was the thread of climate change and environmental sustainability that weaved its way through several parts of the conference. In the panel session called ‘”IT'S ALL IMPORTANT OF COURSE, BUT…”, which hotly debated the question of what is the most important challenge in digital preservation (costs, advocacy, and people all came high up the list, and rightly so), I think it was Keith...
Member preview of new DPC Technology Watch Guidance Note: A case study on understanding user needs
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has released a Member Preview of a new Technology Watch Guidance Note on Understanding user needs: A case study from the National Library of Scotland by Chris Fleet today. Access is an important element of digital preservation workflows and ultimately information is preserved so it can be used: so, understanding what users need is a key aspect of successful digital preservation. This case study is a real-world example of how this has been done at one...