The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) invites the digital preservation community to submit nominations of at-risk digital materials to its 2023 edition of the ‘Bit List’ by Friday 30th June.
A free-to-access and open resource for digital preservation advocacy, the DPC's Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Species (or Bit List for short) is a community-sourced list of at-risk digital materials which is revised every two years. Entries to the list are nominated by the community, who are at the forefront of digital preservation efforts, and reviewed by international organizations which represent global expertise in the preservation of the listed digital species.
By compiling and maintaining the Bit List, the DPC aims to equip digital preservation practitioners with independent evidence that digital materials are critically endangered, and that action is required, in order to support their targeted advocacy efforts.
First published in 2017 and inspired by the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, the global digital preservation community is once again invited to nominate at-risk content to the Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Species in 2023.
“As a community, we now have extensive experience and expertise in protecting and preserving vulnerable digital resources. But, more often, our challenge is about how we communicate the risks which face these materials and the urgency for digital preservation action to save them,” says Sarah Middleton, Head of Advocacy & Community Engagement for the DPC. “The Bit List gives the global digital preservation community a chance to communicate that challenge from practical experience, as well as a tool with which to authoritatively demonstrate and evidence the need for action!”
Digital materials face multiple risks and by drawing attention to these risks, the Bit List identifies the practical steps needed in all agencies to secure them.
Current entries include content types like social media or specific file formats; media types like floppy disks or obsolete optical media; or data from specific contexts like politically sensitive content or community archives which are not at risk for any technical reason but reside in unstable contexts. Nominations to the Bit List 2023 could combine any or all of these themes.
Once the nominations have been collected and collated, the Bit List Council – comprising experts which represent global expertise in the preservation of the listed digital species – will evaluate the entries before arriving at their final list which will be published on 2nd November 2023 for World Digital Preservation Day; providing digital preservationists around the globe with an updated advocacy tool on a day designed to draw attention to this real and current challenge.
Make your nomination for the DPC’s Digitally Endangered Species by Friday 30th June.
Have you used the Bit List in a business case, presentation or bid to help make the case for digital preservation action? The DPC would love to hear your story, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Join the conversation on social media about the Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Species using the hashtag #DPCBitList and #WDPD2023.