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 ensuring our digital memory is accessible tomorrow. 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.
Who can apply? The awards are open to all and are international in scope. There is no restriction on public or private sector and there is no restriction to whether the nominee is a member of the DPC. Nominations s 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.
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 convenor or head of department is effectively the senior manager.
My project is not from the UK, can I still apply? The Digital Preservation Award seeks entries from all around the world and imposes no geographical restrictions. Nominees should be aware that the judges are predominantly based in the UK, that DPC members are predominantly in the UK and Ireland and we will be using UK media outlets to communicate the results. Consequently nominees may wish to frame their nominations in terms that a UK audience will understand.
Why is there a timeframe? The Awards are given for initiatives that were completed between 1st August 2014 and 31st July 2016, though judges will be asked to use their discretion in the admittance of nominations for new categories of award which have been completed before 1st August 2014. 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 to ensuring our digital memory is accessible tomorrow. 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 programme 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.
Will you supply travel grants? Where necessary we will provide travel and subsistence for two participants from each shortlisted nominee to attend the final judging panel, though we will endeavour to use teleconferencing facilities where this is more convenient. We cannot guarantee to provide travel to the awards ceremony.
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.
Deadline: There will be no extensions to the deadline.
Format: Please post us hard copies or email a PDF copy of your application.
The summary and long description should be written for a ‘lay audience’, does this mean people who have no (or barely any) previous knowledge of digital preservation/IT? The summary text should be as accessible as possible– imagine it being reproduced in a newspaper report of winning the award. The longer text will be used by DPC members and others to assess your nomination in the members’ vote. This means you can be a bit more expansive and assume a bit more knowledge, bearing in mind the diversity of the coalition and its partners. In addition, 1) We get a lot of applications and so good writing will help your application stand out; 2) Our judges come from a range of backgrounds – techies, business managers, archivists, academics and so on. So our experts may not be expert in dealing with your concerns. That means it helps to spell things out.
Can we include a diagram(s) in the Long Description? And if so, do the words on the diagram count towards the word count?Yes you may include diagrams though these should be genuine visual aids that help clarify the concepts described in the text. Consequently an over-abundance of diagrams is suggestive of a text that needs to be improved. Diagrams are not included in the word count
Can we include hyperlinks off to further information In the Long Description? Yes you may include hyperlinks, though 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 shortlisted candidates in subsequent presentation or interview). Consequently you should not require judges to follow a hyperlink or expect that they will.
If something is described in Section four: Supporting statements, should this be repeated in the Long Description? Yes, the two have different functions. The judges will have access to the complete nomination form and therefore any text repeated between the two. However shortlisted candidates will be presented to a vote of the members of the DPC (and where appropriate NCDD). Voters will be presented with the long description as part of the ballot paper but will not have access to 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. This is why we recommend that the Long Description is written for a lay audience.
The rules ask that “nominations must be supported at senior management level within the nominees’ institutions, demonstrated by a letter of support.” How should I proceed if the project was undertaken in a personal capacity, and has no institutional affiliation? 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. The reason why we seek senior management approval is primarily to allow for appropriate internal advocacy and to a lesser extent to ensure that we don’t get competing nominations from the same institution or project. Therefore we would recommend that you simply explain that this was a personal project in which had no institutional involvement and therefore that no letter is available.
Within the supporting statements, ‘cost effectiveness’ suggests an indication of the balance between total resources consumed for development and the benefits (costs saved) of applying the tool/results of project. However it is directly followed by ‘what resources did you consume’, which suggests only an indication of the total costs/resources are expected (which is not the same as ‘cost effectiveness’). Please could you provide guidance on what is expected within this section? The cost-effectiveness category was introduced by the judges in 2010 as a mechanism to help compare large well-funded projects with small unfunded ones. In principle the former would always deliver more impact than the latter, which if followed to a logical conclusion would mean that only large projects would ever win the award. This is to be avoided. In practice therefore the judges will assess the cost-effectiveness of your initiative based on a description of the resource used. The category is entirely about the effort used to develop the solution, not the effort that the solution might save once deployed. You may choose to illustrate the latter point under the ‘Clarity and Practicality of Benefits’ section.
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 second call for applications in June 2016. In response to this invitation, members should email their nominations to sarah [dot] middleton [at] dpconline [dot] org and we will collate a list for the judges consideration in September. 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.
Our organization offers training placements and internships in digital preservation offered through a range of host institutions. There have been 37 traineeships spread over 3 years. Do these qualify for the student award?
This answer comes in 4 parts, so be sure to track down the comments boxes below. 1. The judges are keen to encourage strong nominations in each category and welcome any applications which meet the core description of the award. In this case … ‘it is presented to the student that, in the eyes of the judges, has produced an essay, course work, project report, dissertation or thesis that has had (or will have) the greatest contribution in ensuring our digital memory is available tomorrow.’ So, provided there is a an original ‘thing’ for us to assess from the placement, such as a report or diary, then they would certainly qualify. Consequently yes to the student award. 2. You however should consider the whole programme as a single course of study and therefore should not give us a profusion of applications. You should select the best report / dissertation/ essay / product and submit that rather than a long catalogue of work. In other words you should be confident that you are submitting something worthy of the award and not expect the judges select between nominations from the same programme. 3. For the student award we would permit an institution to submit one piece of work completed in each academic year. So depending on your schedule they may present something for the 2013-14 session (ie completed after 31st July 2014) 2014-15 session and 2015-16 sessions (ie completed before 31st July 2016). 4. And finally, based on the description of the programme you should also consider applying for the Teaching and Communications award for the whole programme.
I would like to propose our project for an award. It has 3 phases: phase 1 and 2 are complete and published. Phase 3 is ongoing and is due to finish on 14th September. Can you give me an indication of whether it would be worth me putting in a nomination for this ...perhaps for just phases 1 and 2 being that phase 3 won't quite be finished in time....though I do think the phase 3 work would fit well into one of the award themes around the practical application of tools. The time frame is designed to ensure that the judges aren’t asked to comment on promises. I would encourage you to apply based on phases 1 and 2 and would make three observations: 1. Although phase 3 of the project is not complete within the time frame, if key deliverables were complete then they would certainly count. We’re less interested in project deadlines and final reports than in usefulness and impact. 2. Phases 1 and 2 would certainly be in scope. In previous years it has helped applicants to specify one particular outcome which is easy to assess rather than many different actions grouped under one large heading. The neater the application the easier it will be to assess. Phase three, although continuing, could be cited as evidence of impact from earlier work. 3. A submission at this point would not prevent a submission in the next round (2018). At least one winner in recent years was a re-submission from a previous round.
Having read the information in your FAQs about eligibility to apply for an award, I would just like to double-check that as a for-profit publisher of digital academic resources in the private sector, we would be eligible to put themselves forward for an award? The awards are open to all and are international in scope. There is no restriction on public or private sector. I can confirm that you would indeed be eligible. There are probably four categories of award and you may wish to pitch for depending on the substance of your work. The awards for ‘innovation’, ‘communications’, ‘legacy preserved’ apply to different types of work. We also have a special category precisely for digital preservation in industrial and commercial environments, such as a for-profit publisher. So in your case any application to the first three could well ‘double up’ as an application to this 4th category.
My colleagues and I want to submit a nomination for the DPC teaching and communication and had two questions. 1) Do you want both a paper and PDF copy of the application or will PDF suffice? 2) The form indicates that a senior executive should write a letter of support. As Head of School, would that be sufficient, or should I ask my College Principal? 1) one version will suffice, PDF is fine. 2) If you are to be the nominating party - the supporting letter should come from a senior manager, in this case your College Principal.
Please could you provide more guidance on how to respond to: 'Public profile: what is the public profile of the digital objects you have safeguarded? (up to 100 words)'.The judges would like to know if/why the content you are preserving would be of interest to the public? Is it recognisable as having belonged to someone of scientific, cultural or historic importance for example? Is it the first of a kind? Did it herald a change in scientific, historic or cultural process? E.g. David Bowie’s email collection, the first data produced by the Large Hadron Collider.
Projects outside UK: Though DPC accepts nominations globally, it is mentioned somewhere in the document “The project should demonstrate benefit for the UK, but may be carried out elsewhere.” In this case the project has been carried out in Doha, Qatar. Does it still meet the criteria? The project may have been carried out anywhere in the world, but please demonstrate how you are sharing results and lessons learned with the wider digital preservation community so that they may also learn from the efforts undertaken. In this case, explain how you have engaged organisations outside Qatar, either as part of the project or in post-project communications and dissemination.
Nomination Fee: Is there a fee for DPC award nomination? If yes, when and how to pay? It is free of charge to enter the Digital Preservation Awards – there is no fee.
Supporting Presentation and AV: We have created a supporting AV film and presentation that we’d like to be looked at during the shortlisting process. Is it possible to share that along with the nomination pack. If yes, how? The judges will only use the submitted documentation requested in the nomination pack to evaluate the first round of entries (shortlisting). Judges may request further supporting material once candidates are shortlisted, but only the material requested should be submitted at each stage of the process.
The Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy vs. The Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Industry: Which one would be more relevant for our project? Can we nominate in both the categories? The DPC is unable to recommend which category would be most appropriate for an entry. However, there is nothing to prevent you from submitting the same entry for multiple categories.
I’m submitting nominations for the student award and the teaching award – but I’m assuming you don’t want the actual work the student completed at this point? Can I check – at the first nomination stage you only want the form returned and management’s endorsement?That is correct.
I am applying for Only One Category: Safeguarding the Digital Legacy. Does This Letter of Support applies to the above category and is it mandatory?' Yes a letter of support is required for the ‘Safeguarding the Digital Legacy’ category. The Awards are organised primarily to ensure that good work in digital preservation is recognised more broadly, including within organisations that deliver digital preservation projects an initiatives of their own. That is why we ask you to get support from appropriate managers or champions associated with the nomination.
Should the letter of support be be a scanned copy of Referral on Letter Head or is an email acceptable? Any format will do. It’s the fact that they are made aware of your work and happy to support it that counts.
I am working on the Digital Preservation Award Form. There is a Field: Ensure that a letter of support is included with this nomination form.I am applying for Only One Category: Safeguarding the Digital Legacy. Does This Letter of Support apply to the above category and is it mandatory? Yes, the letter of support does apply to this category and should be provided by an appropriate member of senior management. Please refer to the FAQs and other comments above where you will find more information on the letter of support.
