In an exciting finale to the Digital Preservation Awards 2022, organisations and practitioners of digital preservation from around the world gathered together for a glittering presentation ceremony on Monday 12th September 2022, at the iPres 2022 conference! Watch the ceremony now:
Meet the Winners
ARCHIVER Project
2022 Winner of the International Council on Archives Award for Collaboration and Cooperation presented by Meg Phillips and Neil Grindley
ARCHIVER is a unique initiative in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) that spent 3 years developing innovative services for Long Term Digital Preservation of scientific datasets. R&D was performed competitively by commercial suppliers, over 3 phases, selecting pilot services led by Arkivum and LIBNOVA, for scientific data archiving and preservation. The R&D was driven by a diverse range of stakeholders including CERN, operating the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, DESY (the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, in Germany), the EMBL-EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute, in Cambridge), and PIC (Port d’Informació Científica, near Barcelona), contributing high-value datasets associated to the EOSC.
The effective preservation of archaeological virtual reconstructions
2022 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Neil Chue Hong and Kirsty Lingstadt
Many different professional communities are currently working on the preservation of complex digital objects, but there is not a unified structure drawing together all the numerous threads around preserving archaeological virtual reconstructions. This PhD programme showed that archaeological virtual reconstructions are a blend of artistic and scientific creativity. These ‘hybrid digital objects’ require delicate care to be preserved effectively in the long term. Thus, when considering a virtual reconstruction project, there are practical aspects that need to be tackled. In addressing these issues, this thesis presents a foundation (preservation framework) for how those various sectors fit together.
Learning through doing: building digital preservation skills in Wales
2022 Winner of the Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications presented by Remco van Veenendaal and Roxana Maurer
The Learning through Doing initiative is rooted in addressing issues arising from digital preservation in a practical way and addressing them collectively. The opportunities presented by the use of platforms such as Teams and Zoom enabled proactive engagement and facilitated connection across Wales. These platforms were used to deliver the Saving the Bits training programme which provided a general introduction to digital preservation principles and practices for those in the cultural, education and public sectors in Wales. Another element of the initiative addressed the specific issue of remote deposit of digital content to the National Library of Wales, which is in the process of refinement. Through working with students at Aberystwyth University in a practical workshop, issues identified which were addressed to improve Library processes. Through interactive engagement across Wales, skills and knowledge were built, underpinned by the resources, community knowledge and training materials which are freely available through the internet.
sasha arden with 'Access to Artistic Content on CD-ROMs'
2022 Winner of the The National Archives (UK) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation presented by April Miller and Lotte Wijsman
CD-ROMs completely changed the realm of artistic possibilities in the 1990s, but have you experienced one in the last ten years or so? The answer is likely no, and that is because CD-ROMs are now an obsolete format. This means that CD-ROMs are no longer made or in use. Further, changes in computer hardware, namely the phasing out of optical disc drives, as well as in operating systems like Mac OS 9, have made it impossible to view and experience the contents of existing artist CD-ROMs. Because of these difficulties, an important part of digital art’s history is in limbo.
As part of their graduate internship with New York University in 2021-22, sasha worked on access to artist CD-ROMs with Collection Care Research at Tate. Keith Piper’s project Relocating the Remains (1999) served as a case study to explore the technical aspects of how to enable interaction with the CD-ROM contents. Sasha also paid attention to maintaining essential characteristics like color, and behaviors like click reaction times or rollover animations, which can be affected by current methods of access. Their research also considered where artist CD-ROMs sit within Tate’s collections and how that affects discoverability and access, as well as available preservation resources.
National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation Digital Preservation Program
2022 Winner of the Research Data Alliance Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector presented by Connie Clare and Karen Sampson
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is devoted to the study of the history and legacy of the Canadian residential school program. In 2020 the NCTR won a $6 million Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant (CFI) to develop a digital preservation program for over four million digital documents and 7,000 recordings of Indigenous testimonies of the history and legacy of the residential school program. The project created a digital infrastructure and workplan for preservation of its digital holdings to make NCTR materials meaningfully available to Indigenous communities in support of the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples.
2022 winner of the Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy presented by Kieran O'Leary and Patricia Sleeman
The 'Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th' (Archiving Reproductive Health) project aims to provide long-term preservation and access to at-risk born-digital content generated by grassroots women’s reproductive health movements before and during the campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution. Funded by Wellcome and administered by the Digital Repository of Ireland, the project is publishing and making available digital collections from activist organisations that otherwise would be lost. The preservation and publication of these collections add significantly to our understanding of women's rights movements and the history of reproductive healthcare in Ireland.
2022 winner of the DPC 20th Anniversary Award presented by Kevin Ashley and Edith Halvarsson
PREMIS is the de-facto standard for preservation metadata and is today implemented in countless digital preservation systems – open as well as closed source, serving large archives as well as small repositories, supporting end-to-end processes as well as tools for specific tasks. But PREMIS is also much more than metadata: the Data Dictionary is a description of core information about digital objects. It can be used to implement PREMIS, but also to understand digital preservation processes and to benchmark your own solution. Lastly, PREMIS is also an active community as can be seen in countless implementation fairs, tutorials, workshops and discussions around the globe over the past 20 years.
Find out more about the Digital Preservation Awards 2022 Finalists
ICA Award for Collaboration and Co-operation:
Kickstart Cymru: Enhancing digital preservation capacity in Wales
ARCHIVER - Archiving and Preservation for Research Environments
Software Sustainability Institute Award for Research and Innovation:
The effective preservation of archaeological virtual reconstructions
Enabling DNA as a digital preservation medium
Enriching, Empowering, and Futureproofing: The benefits of Linked (Open) Data for archives
Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications:
Learning through doing: building digital preservation skills in Wales
Managing Digital Archives online learning course from ICA
Professional archives and records education for the 21st Century
The National Archives (UK) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work:
Catherine Alexander with 'An Investigation of Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation in Scotland'
Mychely Schubert with 'Blockchain and land property records: a multiple case study identifying barriers'
sasha arden with 'Access to Artistic Content on CD-ROMs'
Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy:
Archiving Reproductive Health
Legacies of Stephen Dwoskin’s Personal Cinema: the digital and archival legacy
Preserving and sharing the Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert photographic collection
RDA Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third sector:
National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation
Long-term preservation of Digital Health Records
Mahou-San Miguel: Preserving the Legacy of the Leading Spanish Brewery Company
The DPC 20th Anniversary Award:
PREMIS Data Dictionary and related resources
Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI): Supporting Collaboration, Cooperation and Community Building for Digital Preservation
PRONOM Technical Registry
The DPC would like to thank our international panel of judges and all sponsors for their continued support in ensuring the Digital Preservation Awards can continue to recognise and celebrate achievements in the field of digital preservation.
Gabriela Andaur Gomez, National Archives of Chile
Hilary Hanahoe, Research Data Alliance (RDA)
Roxana Maurer, Bibliothèque Nationale du Luxembourg
Meg Phillips, ICA / U.S. NARA
Angela Beking, Library and Archives Canada
Natalie Harrower, Digital Repository of Ireland
Kari May, NDSA / University of Pittsburgh
Sonia Ranade, The National Archives UK
Adam Bell, AARNet
Haliza Jailani, NLB Singapore
April Miller, World Bank Group
Karen Sampson, Lloyds Banking Group
Neil Chue Hong, Software Sustainability Institute
Neil Jefferies, Bodleian Libraries
Jenny Mitcham, DPC
Remco van Veenendaal, NANETH / Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed
