DPC

Martin Eve of CrossRef has some sobering news for researchers. A recent analysis suggests that around a quarter of academic publications are not being preserved for the future. 

Eve’s sample is based on the assessment of around 7.5 million of the e-books and articles for which CrossRef provides a fixed identifier, or Digital Object Identifier.   These identifiers prevent ‘link rot’ so that, even if a URL changes, an article or book can still be cited and retrieved.  But they’re not enough on their own because they only preserve the link not the destination. So, unless there’s a preservation service guaranteeing the content, the DOI will stop working if a publisher goes out of business or simply removes a title.  Scholarly content needs to be preserved before it is deleted, not after. 

Prompted by the 2022 Society of American Archivists (SAA) publication of Museum Archives: Practice, Issues, Advocacy (ed. Rachel Chatalbash, Susan Hernandez, and Megan Schwenke), the Yale Center for British Art and SAA's Museum Archives Section are hosting a one-day symposium to examine the current position and future directions of the museum archives field. The symposium will be held in person at the Yale University Art Gallery and livestreamed online. We welcome proposals from new and established museum archivists, and their professional allies, that examine any aspect of the museum archives profession. Themes for consideration include, but are not limited to: 

The Born Digital Cultural Heritage Now #BDCH23 conference https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/bdch-23/ was held at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia from 29 Nov to 1 Dec 2023. It was a forum for researchers, practitioners, artists, historians, cultural theorists, and industry professionals to discuss the challenges of collecting, preserving, and accessing born digital cultural heritage material. Much born digital cultural heritage material such as media art, video games, web content, discussion forum and bulletin board posts, architectural documentation and other digital data created over the last twenty to thirty years is no longer accessible. This is the result of a range of technical and non-technical issues including hardware and software obsolescence, media deterioration, content abandonment, institutional and business decisions, archival practices, legal restrictions, and cultural and audience changes. The #BDCH23 conference focused on how these issues are being addressed in different contexts and the impact this loss on our culture and society.