DPC

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 principles.

‘Practice research’ is ‘an umbrella term that describes all manners of research where practice is the significant method of research conveyed in a research output’ (Bulley and Sahin, 2021). Practice research outputs are typically multi-component portfolios or collections of non-text file formats which are disseminated and hosted in separate places such as personal websites, institutional repositories, archives, and commercial video-sharing platforms. These factors pose a significant challenge to the preservation and reuse of practice research and practice research data.

Leontien is a collaborative PhD student at The National Archives, UK and University College London, her research is about access to born-digital material. 

Within the digital preservation community, the term computational access is popping up more and more frequently. It is often linked to other terms such as artificial intelligence, data mining and deep neural networks. However, there is often little understanding of what these terms actually mean and how they relate to each other. 

On Friday last week, our latest #DPClinic chat delved into the topic of persistent identifiers (PIDs). As I remarked at the start of the session, persistent identifiers are something that pop up as an example of accepted good practice in DPC RAM, our Rapid Assessment Model. They are mentioned at the managed level of the metadata section with the example “Persistent unique identifiers are assigned and maintained for digital content.”

This section of the Procurement Toolkit describes 10 core requirements for a preservation system that can provide a starting point for requirements development or be used as tool for assessing current systems or as a communication tool.

The aim of this work is to simplify and enhance digital preservation system procurement for both the procurer and for 3rd parties responding to procurement exercises. Organizations procuring digital preservation systems may adopt these core requirements as a starting point and then focus on identifying additional functionalities important to them (perhaps specific to their own organizational context, types of content to be managed, existing technological landscape or certification route). This work may also be used as an educational tool, for example where a practitioner may need to communicate why a typical IT system might not meet the needs of long-term preservation.

• Core requirements for a preservation system ( download )

• Core requirements mapped to DPC RAM ( download )

• Core requirements worksheet ( download )

 These requirements have been created in conjunction with the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

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.

In 2003, a working group at nestor began to determine the trustworthiness of digital archives in more detail. The first results were the "nestor Criteria Catalogue for Trustworthy Digital Archives" (2006, second version 2008) and the "DIN standard 31644 - Criteria for Trustworthy Digital Archives" (2012). Since 2014, nestor has offered a procedure of extended self-evaluation based on the latter and awards the nestor Seal. Today, the "Explanatory notes on the nestor Seal for Trustworthy Digital Archives" are available in six languages.

The workshop will ask whether the expectations have been met. The results of a survey conducted in 2021 will be presented. Afterwards, the workshop will examine the situation in the other countries that have translated the Explanatory notes into their languages, concluding with a discussion on future perspectives.