DPC

Paul Young is Digital Preservation Specialist/Researcher at the National Archives UK

What’s the problem?

Determining reliable dates for digital records can be a source of frustration, especially when confronted with a large volume of digital files with dates that are obviously incorrect, such as why your Microsoft Word Document 1997 version dates from 1^st January 1970.

Dates are very important for The National Archives in particular as we look to transfer records from departments under the 20-year rule of the Public Record Act. When these dates are unknown or obviously incorrect, we cannot be sure if a department is in compliance with the Act.

The National Archives uses the ‘date last modified’ generated by the file system, and extracted via DROID, as the standard ‘go to’ date to populate the official ‘date’ entry in our catalogue. After seeing several collections and scenarios where the ‘date last modified’ did not provide an accurate date for the file we have been doing a bit of investigation of other methods for extracting accurate dates for born-digital records.

This month the Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to welcome Artefactual to its international Supporter Program. The company behind Archivematica and AtoM, Artefactual Systems Inc. works together with cultural heritage organisations, providing their expertise and technology in the domains of digital archiving and digital preservation.  With the goal of advancing the capacity of heritage institutions to preserve and provide access to the cultural assets of the world, Canada-based Artefactual develops free and open-source software and promotes open standards as the best means of enabling this goal.

This workshop is part of a series of events in 2019, run by The Digital Preservation Coalition on behalf of the Jisc Open Research Hub (formerly known as the Research Data Shared Service, RDSS). Currently, this offers a pilot service to enable researchers to deposit data for publication, discovery, safe storage, long term archiving and preservation. As part of the pilot, Jisc have engaged the DPC to facilitate opportunities for community validation, wider dissemination, and horizon scanning with respect to the relationship between institutional research data management and digital preservation. These workshops will consult, present, and shape the digital preservation capabilities of the Open Research Hub.

Introduction

It has long been recognized that ‘resources’ are as important to digital preservation as ‘technology’ or ‘policy’: but whereas technical requirements and standards abound there is much less attention to modelling the financial requirements.  This question of resources is in two parts: the up-front costs of building and sustaining a digital preservation service, and the economic benefits that accrue from preservation.  Both are complex. 

The National Archives (UK) is exploring the creation of a new evidence base for Digital Preservation Risk. 

An evidence based risk model is a fundamental tool in building inclusive digital archival practice for the future, and The National Archives team proposes a new approach to trust, offering a “bottom-up” data driven alternative to the familiar standards-based approaches, which cannot readily accommodate diverse contexts and different priorities.

This webinar will provide an overview of the National Archives' work in this area, presenting a framework for describing and explaining a complex and interdependent map of risk events, risk management actions and impact on preservation outcomes. The work will allow the comparison and prioritization of different types of threats to the digital archive with potential impact in different areas. 

Speakers

• Sonia Ranade, Head of Digital Archiving at The National Archives, UK
• Alec Mulinder, Head of Digital Risk and Standards at The National Archives, UK

Joining the Webinar

DPC Members, please login to watch the recording

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.

This series of webinars accompanies the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum in Dublin on 2nd July.

Featuring our DPC Supporters in turn, these webinars will showcase product and service offerings before the DPC's Paul Wheatley challenges each to respond on a series of themes which represent (his interpretation of) member concerns. Members may then pose their own questions on how Supporters would manage their concerns in a question and answer session.

DPC Members are encouraged to attend the webinar sessions as Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace offerings, in order to help members identify what is still missing and community needs.

Speaker

• Peter Anderton, VP Product Management for Preservica

Watch the recording

DPC Members and Supporters please login to watch the recording

What's next?

The digital preservation community has many parts; those who create data, the curators who are charged with looking after our digital legacy, solution providers who support the preservation process and those who consume the digital information successfully and continuously preserved. These groups cannot operate independently and alone, each relies on the others to do their bit, to enable the sustained and immediate access to digital information we have all come to expect.

An extension of the DPC Member’s ‘Connecting the Bits’ feedback process which will take place over the preceding months, and this accompanying webinar series, the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019 is a half-day event which will provide a neutral forum to summarise the key challenges anticipated by members, before inviting speakers from our DPC Supporters to collaborate and develop new ideas.

Find out more about the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.

This series of webinars accompanies the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum in Dublin on 2nd July.

Featuring our DPC Supporters in turn, these webinars will showcase product and service offerings before the DPC's Paul Wheatley challenges each to respond on a series of themes which represent (his interpretation of) member concerns. Members may then pose their own questions on how Supporters would manage their concerns in a question and answer session.

DPC Members are encouraged to attend the webinar sessions as Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace offerings, in order to help members identify what is still missing and community needs.

Speakers

• Ben Saxton
• Luke Murphy

Resources

Watch four recent webinars by Formpipe on their Long Term Archive product

Watch the Recording

DPC Members and Supporters please login to watch the recording.

What's next?

The digital preservation community has many parts; those who create data, the curators who are charged with looking after our digital legacy, solution providers who support the preservation process and those who consume the digital information successfully and continuously preserved. These groups cannot operate independently and alone, each relies on the others to do their bit, to enable the sustained and immediate access to digital information we have all come to expect.

An extension of the DPC Member’s ‘Connecting the Bits’ feedback process which will take place over the preceding months, and this accompanying webinar series, the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019 is a half-day event which will provide a neutral forum to summarise the key challenges anticipated by members, before inviting speakers from our DPC Supporters to collaborate and develop new ideas.

Find out more about the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.

Russell Kennedy is Web and Digital Solutions Analyst and Ed Pinsent is Digital Archivist at the University of London

Introduction

You join us at an exciting time. The University of London (UoL) is embarking on an ambitious, collaborative programme of work, which aims to create a culture of digital best practice throughout the institution. Central to this initiative is the long-term digital preservation of content, and our aim is to weave the importance of preservation into the fabric of the University, building it into job descriptions and training provision.

I’ve got a lot of mileage on this blog from writing about our Inclusion and Diversity policy, from the point we decided to create one, to its publication, but this time I’m going to talk about one of the more personal reasons why it was important to me. This week in the UK is Mental Health Awareness Week and I didn’t want it to pass without recognising why it is important and why we need to talk more openly about mental health. Discussion of mental health is still too often taboo and those who suffer from issues stigmatised.  So, when I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression just over two years ago, I decided that I would never shy away from sharing my own experience.

This series of webinars accompanies the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum in Dublin on 2nd July.

Featuring our DPC Supporters in turn, these webinars will showcase product and service offerings before the DPC's Paul Wheatley challenges each to respond on a series of themes which represent (his interpretation of) member concerns. Members may then pose their own questions on how Supporters would manage their concerns in a question and answer session.

DPC Members are encouraged to attend the webinar sessions as Supporter products and services form an important part of how we address the digital preservation challenge. This series aims to present - in the context of member concerns - a portion of the digital preservation marketplace offerings, in order to help members identify what is still missing and community needs.

Watch the recording

DPC Members and Supporters please login to watch the recording

What's next?

The digital preservation community has many parts; those who create data, the curators who are charged with looking after our digital legacy, solution providers who support the preservation process and those who consume the digital information successfully and continuously preserved. These groups cannot operate independently and alone, each relies on the others to do their bit, to enable the sustained and immediate access to digital information we have all come to expect.

An extension of the DPC Member’s ‘Connecting the Bits’ feedback process which will take place over the preceding months, and this accompanying webinar series, the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019 is a half-day event which will provide a neutral forum to summarise the key challenges anticipated by members, before inviting speakers from our DPC Supporters to collaborate and develop new ideas.

Find out more about the Digital Preservation Futures: Community Forum 2019

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.