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
Joining Efforts, a Sure Bet in Digital Preservation
Antonio Guillermo Martinez is the Founder and Head of Product at LIBNOVA. Este blog está disponible en español a continuación: One more year we join the Digital Preservation Coalition's initiative to celebrate the World Digital Preservation Day. This year the central theme to reflect on is "Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort". At LIBNOVA we firmly believe that a successful digital preservation project is the result of a joint effort between the institution and the...
A Guide to the Installation of IsoBuster, IROMLAB and IROMSGL
Niamh Murphy is a Digital Archivist with the Royal Dublin Society. In our community, optical media imaging is an essential yet challenging task to undertake. Despite the plentiful documentation available in support of this topic, establishing a workflow can leave you questioning: Where do I begin?
Digital Preservation Soup
Ailie O'Hagan is the Digital Preservation Officer at Queen's University Belfast. She attended the iPRES 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Starting with Digital Preservation is like making stone soup – the more we come together and pool our resources, the better we can sustain our staff and collections needs.
A Collaborative Approach to Digital Preservation: The Rosetta Community
Daniel Greenberg is Director of Product Management at Ex Libris, part of Clarivate The challenges of digital preservation are constantly evolving. New file formats emerge, old ones become obsolete, and the quest to ensure the longevity of digital assets never ceases. In this changing landscape, one principle remains constant at Ex Libris, part of Clarivate: the power of community-led development. This credo is more than just a philosophy; it's the core of our digital preservation efforts....
Get Ready ‘cause here comes World Digital Preservation Day
Songs, video clips, hackathons, global events and institutions opening their doors showcasing what digital preservation is all about: That’s World Digital Preservation Day in a nutshell. On Thursday 2 November – in just 2 weeks’ time - World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD) 2023 starts when the sun comes up in Samoa...
Participate in World Digital Preservation Day 2023!
The biggest celebration of the year is just one month away today: World Digital Preservation Day (#WDPD2023) will take place on Thursday 2nd November! The DPC invites all data creators, archivists, curators, community members and digipres folk from around the world to celebrate digital preservation by participating in a whole day dedicated to all of the benefits and opportunities enabled by the hard work of our dynamic and collaborative community.
What is the carbon footprint of large-scale global digital preservation?
Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. It was great to be at iPRES 2023 in person again this year. I was privileged to be invited onto a panel called ‘Tipping Point’ that was run by Paul Stokes and Karen Colbron from Jisc. The panel questioned the premise that there is so much data being generated each year that we are at the point where we no longer have the ability to process it in any meaningful way, let alone curate and preserve it. Panellists...
What is the carbon footprint of large-scale global digital preservation?
Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. It was great to be at iPRES 2023 in person again this year. I was privileged to be invited onto a panel called ‘Tipping Point’ that was run by Paul Stokes and Karen Colbron from Jisc. The panel questioned the premise that there is so much data being generated each year that we are at the point where we no longer have the ability to process it in any meaningful way, let alone curate and preserve it. Panellists...
Celebrating 20 DPC members in Australasia and Asia-Pacific!
Robin Wright is Head of Australasia and Asia-Pacific for the Digital Preservation Coalition In January 2018 the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) embarked on a new strategic plan to prepare the transition to a truly global foundation. That ambition was elaborated on in June 2019 when the DPC’s mission was formally expanded to include the following goal statement: To enhance our members’ experience and the capacity of the digital preservation community around the world through the...
World Digital Preservation Day stickers now available to order!
Update: Due to an overwhelming response, we've temporarily closed the possibility to order stickers. Please check the other possibilities to participate in World Digital Preservation Day 2023 on https://www.dpconline.org/events/world-digital-preservation-day!
Digital Preservation Documentation Guide: New DPC resource now available on general release
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has made its newest resource Digital Preservation Documentation: a guide available on general release today, following an exclusive Member preview.
Invitation to join our Python Study Group Launch & Information Session
Are you passionate about coding in Python, teaching others and supporting the digital preservation community? Or would you like to improve your coding skills and learn how to use Python for your digital preservation work?
Notes on the Clear Blue Yonder: Technical Debt and Digital Preservation
Obfuscate and Accumulate Here’s an idea that comes out of a clear blue sky: we don’t talk enough about technical debt in digital preservation. It’s an important concept and one we could be working with. Technical debt is a term used in software development to describe the costs that arise when an easy or cheap solution is adopted over a fully worked out, properly documented, long-term solution. Expedient or cheap solutions which don’t have forwards compatibility make future changes costly if...
Webinar on Immersive Media Preservation with Sound and Vision
As part of the research program of Sound & Vision on Immersive Media, Lieve Baetens has conducted research placement on strategies for the selection and preservation of Immersive Media in Cultural Heritage Institutions. You are all invited to join the free webinar organized by Sound & Vision on Tuesday 26 september (10:00 - 11:30 CEST) on Immersive Media Preservation.
Choosing a Persistent Identifier Type for Your Digital Objects: New Technology Watch Guidance Note now available on general release
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has made the next in its series of Technology Watch Guidance Notes, Choosing a Persistent Identifier Type for Your Digital Objects by Remco van Veenendaal of the National Archives of the Netherlands, available on general release today.
Does net zero emissions from energy usage in the cloud mean carbon free digital preservation is on the horizon?
Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. If cloud infrastructure providers such as Google, AWS and Azure have net zero emissions from their use of energy, then does this mean we no longer need to worry about the carbon footprint of digital preservation in the cloud? The answer is no. Carbon emissions from energy consumption is just one part of the story. The embodied footprint [7] of all the ICT servers that run in the cloud also needs to be taken into...
DPC Reading Club: How the concept of AI technology impacts digital archival expertise
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...
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...
The Anthropocene Remembered: Digital Memory After the Climate Crisis
I was honoured to give a keynote lecture at the start of the FIAT/ IFTA’s Media Management Seminar in May 2023. The text below is a slightly adapted version of the talk which was also recorded and will be made available in due course. It’s wonderful to be with you here in Dublin today and to meet as many friends and colleagues again after so long: this event hasn’t happened in person since 2019 and so it’s a privilege to be invited to be the opening keynote in a face to face meeting. My...
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...