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
DCDC 2022 - The Future Landscape of Digital Archives
Yi-Ting Lin is a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow. She recently attended DCDC 2022 with the support of the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Thanks to DPC's support, I attended the Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities (DCDC) conference for the first time last week (#DCDC22) and learnt loads of new development and strategies. In this blog post, I contextualise the content of what I learned with themes and highlight...
Benchmarking Access at National Archives of Australia
Rowena Loo is the Director, Digital Archives Innovation and Research at the National Archives of Australia. Access – it’s the end goal of all digital preservation activity and the true test of our digital preservation efforts. After all, if no one’s going to access it, why preserve it? If it’s not technically possible to access it, how can we claim it’s been preserved? However, it’s all too easy to focus on the more immediate challenges of transfer, ingest and file format preservation,...
Sharing the Load
Helen Dafter is Archivist at The Postal Museum in the UK Readers of this blog will be well aware of the three legged stool of digital preservation. One key element of this stool is staff skills. For some time I have been concerned that digital preservation skills at The Postal Museum are concentrated in one member of staff (myself). This is undesirable in terms of both organisational and individual resilience.
Sharing the Load
Helen Dafter is Archivist at The Postal Museum in the UK Readers of this blog will be well aware of the three legged stool of digital preservation. One key element of this stool is staff skills. For some time I have been concerned that digital preservation skills at The Postal Museum are concentrated in one member of staff (myself). This is undesirable in terms of both organisational and individual resilience.
The DPC Competency Framework
The DPC Digital Preservation Competency Framework identifies and describes information on the skills, knowledge, and competencies required for successful digital preservation. The 2nd Version of the Framework was released in April 2025. It builds on previous work on identifying competencies for digital preservation and guidance from key models of good practice to provide a framework that is: Applicable for organizations of any size and in any sector. Able to support a range of...
EPISODE 7: Digital Preservation Futures with Artefactual
When: Thursday 19 May 2022, 16:30 - 17:30 UTC+1 (click for local times) Where: Zoom This series of webinars will showcase the product and service offerings of each of our DPC Supporters in turn in response to a current theme which reflects member interests. DPC Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace...
Digitisation of The Scotsman Collection: Digital Access and Preservation at Historic Environment Scotland
Christopher Viney is Archive Digitisation Officer at Historic Environment Scotland Over the past decade issues in access to archival collections have been thrown sharply into focus demonstrating the value of digitising analogue archival material. This provides a greater level of access and mitigates potential barriers that can often shut people out of our institutions. Indeed, digitisation and digital preservation provides a key tool in the work of Historic Environment Scotland to...
Digitisation of The Scotsman Collection: Digital Access and Preservation at Historic Environment Scotland
Christopher Viney is Archive Digitisation Officer at Historic Environment Scotland Over the past decade issues in access to archival collections have been thrown sharply into focus demonstrating the value of digitising analogue archival material. This provides a greater level of access and mitigates potential barriers that can often shut people out of our institutions. Indeed, digitisation and digital preservation provides a key tool in the work of Historic Environment Scotland to...
EPISODE 6: Digital Preservation Futures with Twist Bioscience
When: Tuesday 17 May 2022, 17:00 - 18:00 UTC+1 (click for local times) Where: Zoom This series of webinars will showcase the product and service offerings of each of our DPC Supporters in turn in response to a current theme which reflects member interests. DPC Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace...
EPISODE 5: Digital Preservation Futures with LIBNOVA
When: Friday 13 May 2022, 12:00 - 13:00 UTC+1 (click for local times) Where: Zoom This series of webinars will showcase the product and service offerings of each of our DPC Supporters in turn in response to a current theme which reflects member interests. DPC Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace...
No time to waste: what’s ticking at CLOCKSS
Alicia Wise is Executive Director of CLOCKSS Time is a thief of memory, even for formal publications, unless long-term digital preservation arrangements are in place. It takes a community to safeguard the scholarly record. It is too big a job for any single organisation, and too horrific for our species if done badly.
Reducing the pain of procurement
Michael Popham is Digital Preservation Analyst at the DPC and Jenny Mitcham is Head of Good Practice and Standards at the DPC. Perhaps you’ve been given the go-ahead to procure a “digital preservation system”, or you’re trying to work out what differentiates such a system from the applications and infrastructure that you already have in place? How do you decide what you really need, especially in light of the rapidly evolving marketplace of commercial and open source preservation...
Reducing the pain of procurement
Michael Popham is Digital Preservation Analyst at the DPC and Jenny Mitcham is Head of Good Practice and Standards at the DPC. Perhaps you’ve been given the go-ahead to procure a “digital preservation system”, or you’re trying to work out what differentiates such a system from the applications and infrastructure that you already have in place? How do you decide what you really need, especially in light of the rapidly evolving marketplace of commercial and open source preservation...
iPres looks to the Future: host cities announced for 2024, 2025 and 2026
After an intense period of competition and rigorous assessment, the iPres Steering Group is delighted to announce that the following cities have been selected to host the conference in the years ahead:
DPC Procurement Toolkit 2.0 now available!
The DPC is proud to announce the launch of version 2.0 of the DPC Procurement Toolkit with updated and brand-new content. The procurement of third-party systems and services has become an essential component of many organizations’ digital preservation programmes, but it can be a challenging process requiring lots of effort with no guarantee of a good outcome.
DPC Procurement Toolkit 2.0 now available!
The DPC is proud to announce the launch of version 2.0 of the DPC Procurement Toolkit with updated and brand-new content. The procurement of third-party systems and services has become an essential component of many organizations’ digital preservation programmes, but it can be a challenging process requiring lots of effort with no guarantee of a good outcome.
Capturing and preserving practice based research
Holly Ranger is Research Data Management Officer in the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office at the University of Westminster Practice Research Voices (PR Voices) is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project led by the University of Westminster. The project is scoping the development of an Open Library of Practice Research for the dissemination and preservation of practice research, building on existing software and standards and guided by open research...
Capturing and preserving practice based research
Holly Ranger is Research Data Management Officer in the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office at the University of Westminster Practice Research Voices (PR Voices) is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project led by the University of Westminster. The project is scoping the development of an Open Library of Practice Research for the dissemination and preservation of practice research, building on existing software and standards and guided by open research...
DPC Rapid Assessment Model: Turkish translation now available!
[Türkçe versiyonu aşağıdadır] The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is delighted to share a Turkish translation of its Rapid Assessment Model (RAM), with thanks to Dr. Özhan Sağlik at Bursa Uludağ University in Turkey and Nathalie Defne Gier and Mustafa Ergül at Koç University in Turkey who generously donated their time to make the resource accessible. Now available as a PDF download in Turkish, the second edition of the DPC RAM is a digital preservation maturity modelling tool that has...
Digital Preservation at BT Archives
Melanie Peart is Archives Specialist at BT Heritage & Archives. BT Archives was set up over 35 years ago to preserve the history of the then recently privatised company, British Telecom. Now a global telecommunications company, BT has its origins in mid-19th century telephone and telegraph businesses. Its history includes, amongst many other things, the iconic red telephone box (or more accurately telephone kiosk), undersea cable-laying and memorable advertising...