DPC Members Forum and Networking Event - The Americas

09:00 – 09:45

Registration open.

Please come early to meet your fellow delegates

09:45 – 10:00

A welcome from our hosts at ITHAKA**

Kate Wittenberg, Portico Managing Director

10:00 – 10:45

Keynote address**

Stacey Jones and Danielle Taylor, Digital POWRR Project

Over the past decade, the Digital POWRR Project has undertaken a journey from research initiative to a trusted source of hands-on, community-centered digital preservation training. Informed by participant feedback and an evolving curriculum—including multi-day institutes and the POWRR Peer Assessment Program—the POWRR team with share insights from that journey, highlighting what makes digital preservation instruction effective, human-centered, and worth sustained investment, especially for those working in under-resourced contexts. We hope this talk inspires a lively discussion on digital preservation training and community-centered digital preservation.

10:45 – 11:15

How will we calculate the carbon footprint of our digital preservation activities?**

William Kilbride, DPC

11:15 – 11:30

Break

11:30 – 12:00

Coordinating an Interdepartmental Rapid Assessment Model

Kari May, University of Pittsburgh Library System

12:00 – 12:15

Supporter Lightning Talk with LIBNOVA and Morning Wrap-Up** 

12:15 – 13:15

Lunch and networking

13:15 – 14:30

Refreshments available midway

Workshops:

DPC Rapid Assessment Model (RAM)

William Kilbride, DPC

The DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) is a digital preservation maturity modelling tool that has been designed to enable rapid benchmarking of an organization’s digital preservation capability and facilitate continuous improvement over time. This workshop explains the key concepts which make up the DPC RAM and helps users get started in establishing their base line for digital preservation.

or

Advocating for Digital Preservation

Sarah Middleton, DPC

This session introduces participants to the fundamentals of advocacy and communication in the context of digital preservation, helping them understand key concepts, stakeholder needs and how to craft a few key messages to help them drive change in challenging contexts. Through some short exercises and real‑world examples, attendees will analyze their audiences, identify motivators and develop compelling elevator pitches.

14:30 - 14:45 

Thanks and close.

15:30 – 17:00

Professional visit 

About our Keynote Speakers

Stacey Jones is the Digital Preservation Librarian and Unit Lead for Digital Preservation and Production at the University of Arizona Libraries, where she oversees digital preservation and digitization services as well as community-focused engagement through the Wildcats Memory Lab. She previously held positions at Arizona State University, Beloit College, and Northern Illinois University. Stacey has helped shape and lead Digital POWRR since its inception in 2012, serving in a range of instructional and leadership roles, most recently as Principal Investigator for the POWRR Peer Assessment Program. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and Co-Chair of its Membership Working Group, and previously chaired NDSA’s 2023 Digital Preservation conference. She is also a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Workforce Development Sub-Committee and DPC Americas Sub-Committee. She earned her M.A. in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her B.A. in American Studies from the University of Illinois.

Danielle Taylor is the Digital Preservation Librarian at Indiana University Libraries. She is responsible for assessing and meeting the digital preservation needs of various library departments. She plays a lead role in establishing a cohesive digital preservation program and is manager of the Born-Digital Preservation Lab. Prior to joining IU Libraries in the Digital Collections Services department, she was the Digital Initiatives & Preservation Archivist at the Filson Historical Society (Louisville, KY), Preservation Specialist with the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Project Director for the Digital POWRR Project, and Curator of Manuscripts at the Regional History Center & University Archives at Northern Illinois University. She holds a BA in history from Saint Mary's College (IN) and an MA-LIS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

09:00 – 09:30

Registration open, tea and coffee provided

09:30 - 09:45

Welcome and introduction to the DPC Members Forum

Sarah Middleton, DPC

09:45 – 10:20

Digital Preservation Repository Evaluation and Migration

Kyle Rimkus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (in-person)

Since 2014 the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has operated a locally developed digital preservation repository called Medusa. In recent years Medusa has accumulated significant technical debt, and its feature set has fallen behind what it once provided to its users. Meanwhile, the market for digital preservation solutions as well as open-source options has evolved. For these reasons, we are internally investigating future plans for Medusa. Should we fortify it in its current or a modified form, or migrate away to an open source or vended solution? If we would prefer a vended solution, could we afford one? I would like to present on our journey thus far and lead a group discussion on digital preservation repository platform evaluation, migration, and affordability.

Session type: Discuss

10:20 – 10:55

The Day the Storage Went Weird: A Digital Preservation Tabletop Exercise

Nathan Tallman, APTrust (in-person)

This interactive tabletop exercise walks participants through a realistic incident affecting an institutional digital preservation repository: a fixity report flags checksum mismatches in one storage location, and access requests arrive before the scope is clear. Working in small groups, participants decide what actions to take, what evidence to preserve, how to document decisions, and how to communicate with internal stakeholders. The exercise explicitly balances the three legs of digital preservation: resources, organization, and technology.

The goal is not to find a single “correct” answer, but to compare approaches and surface gaps in local preparedness. The exercise emphasizes real operational challenges: incident response, restoration workflows, communications, governance, and risk assessment. Participants will leave with concrete questions and takeaways they can apply in their own programs.

Session type: Play / Learn

10:55 – 11:10

Break

11:10 – 11:45

FADGI’s Draft Tiered Community Recommendations for Content Authenticity and Provenance (TCR4CAP)

Kate Murray (online), Genevieve Havemeyer-King (in-person) and Paul Kelly (in-person)

FADGI (US Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) is working on an active project to define community recommendations for implementing content authenticity and provenance for digital audiovisual collections content, especially as more content is impacted by AI along its lifecycle. Inspired by the structure of the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation (https://ndsa.org/publications/levels-of-digital-preservation/) tiered approach, evaluating functional areas from simple to more robust, the community recommendation will identify a range of needs/workflows/tools appropriate for different use cases and resource levels. The goal of the session is to review work-to-date and seek community feedback.

Session type: Share/discuss

11:45 – 12:20

The Journey to a Format Policy Registry

Amanda Tomé, Digital Research Alliance of Canada (online)

Over the last two years, Digital Preservation Services for the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) has been grappling with many different formats. In February we released our Format Policy Registry and Strategy to the public. This share and discuss session will look at the journey that Digital Preservation Services took to get to  the point of releasing the FPR, look at the process of updating the FPR, and talk about what’s on the horizon. We are interested in hearing feedback from the community on how they communicate their digital preservation practices to their users.

Session type: Share/Discuss

12:20– 13:20

Lunch

13:20 – 14:20

Games session

Digital Preservationists Anonymous (Fail Club)

14:20 – 14:55

Digital Preservation Program Measurement: A Continual Journey

Kyle Browness, Library and Archives Canada (online)

This session includes a brief presentation by Library and Archives Canada on its digital preservation program and how it thinks about measurement and performance indicators. The second part of the session is an open discussion on a series of questions about how participants think about program measurement in their own organizations. The goal of the session is to help all attendees come away with a greater understanding of how their colleagues are thinking about program measurement, the types of indicators they use, and ways in which they might want to improve their operational measurement for program advocacy and effectiveness. 

Session type: Share / Discuss

14:55 – 15:10

Break

15:10 – 15:45

To Trust or Not to Trust

Carol Kussman, University of Minnesota (online)

I’m wondering if people have made decisions on when to trust ‘others’ to preserve their stuff and what makes them trust others.  Or when do people not trust others? When do we need to keep a backup copy of the things others preserve for us and when don’t we?  Thinking of Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, TIND, other repositories you might use… How can we be most efficient with our storage and time?

Session type: Share/discuss

15:45 – 16:15

Group Discussion: Feedback, wrap up and close

Delaney Sweep from the University of Calgary attended the DPC Forum and Networking Event in Nashville last year. She says:

"I highly recommend attending the DPC’s member forum, especially if you are just starting out in the field of digital preservation. The event will not only provide you with an opportunity to learn from others in the field through the member-led talks but also welcomes you into a community of practitioners in your region."

Read more in Delaney's blog post: Connecting the Americas: Digital Preservation in the Music City.