DPC

The Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to announce that cloud-based web and social media archiving solution provider MirrorWeb is the latest addition to its new Commercial Supporter programme.

MirrorWeb’s archiving technology is used to help organisations create useable archives of all electronic communications, and robust web content monitoring tools ensure that partner approved content remains compliant with digital communications regulations at all times.

November 2016 saw the culmination of possibly the most exciting Digital Preservation Awards EVER! Well, it was for me anyway. Here’s why: we attracted more nominations than ever before – more than 30 from around the world and many from outside the Coalition too, we were able to offer more categories than ever before including a long overdue celebration of the work of our colleagues in commercial organisations and industry, the event was live streamed enabling another 300 people to watch on the night and after the event, #DPA2016 trended in the top 6 UK hashtags that evening (my personal highlight) AND everyone had a great time!

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For organizations challenged by remotely and safely transferring born-digital material from a sender to a recipient, we invite you to join Bertram Lyons (https://www.avpreserve.com/people/bertram-lyons/) for a workshop on AVPreserve's (https://www.avpreserve.com) free EXACTLY tool.  A simple and easy to use application that utilizes the BagIt File Packaging Format standard, EXACTLY supports FTP (and SFTP) transfer, as well as standard network transfers, and integrates into desktop-based file sharing workflows such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Additionally, EXACTLY allows the recipient to create customized metadata templates for the sender to fill out before submission.

Download and find out more about Exactly at https://www.avpreserve.com/tools/exactly/

Shibboleth

I am asked, from time to time, how to persuade management that digital preservation matters. It’s a puzzling question in context and content. For a start, I am not sure I have ever persuaded anyone of anything. I have been on hand when people persuaded themselves but that’s not the same thing. It’s like finding the fire brigade at the scene of every major fire and assuming they are to blame. Moreover, I am not sure it’s possible to offer a global shibboleth for digital preservation that will work for all time zones and all sectors. I’m not saying it’s not possible to make the case but, in this particular conversation contexts matter. A lot of local truths don’t make a universal one.

Last year, just 9 months ago in fact, the DPC declared itself open for international membership – that is to say members based outside the UK and Ireland, where we have our roots. In the months that have passed, we’ve seen six new members… including additions from Canada (official announcement coming later today!), Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US.

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"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Abraham Lincoln

It is clear that the digital preservation community currently faces a nearly endless set of challenges, not the least of which is the availability of archival data storage technologies to meet their requirements now and in the future. Realising highly resilient, very long-term, access to digital content and services will inevitably necessitate the consumption of increasing amounts of raw data storage. However, in recent years there has been a significant, though not unexpected, rationalisation in the data storage industry, coupled with a marked decrease in the rate of growth of storage unit capacities. In this webinar Dr. Mark L Watson, Director of Hardware Development, Archive Storage Technologies, Oracle will describe currently available data storage technologies to meet the digital archivist’s needs, review the likely direction of these in the medium term and examine what – if any – possible alternative technologies might exist in the future and the technological challenges they will face.

Working in the British Museum and moving towards adopting a more fully integrated approach to digital asset management and preservation is a richly rewarding and challenging endeavor. The scale of the challenge is however significant. To illustrate this and highlight the increased order of magnitude of the demands placed on the organisation, I can let you know that one smaller department for example within our organization annually creates upwards of 60,000 digital documents. This is one department in over thirty.

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The E-ARK Knowledge Center (available at http://kc.dlmforum.eu) is an aggregator of services developed under the scope of the E-ARK Project (http://www.eark-project.com/) to (1) support the definition of Information Governance (IG) practices, (2) contribute to the existing body of knowledge of IG, and (3) assess existing IG practices.

In particular, the Maturity Assessment consists on a self-assessment questionnaire that allows organisations to evaluate their archival management practices. The questionnaire is based on the E-ARK maturity model for archival management practices that uses as references OAIS/ISO14721, TRAC/ISO16363, and PAIMAS/ISO20652.

This webinar will present and demonstrate the services at the E-ARK Knowledge Center with particular focus on the Maturity Model that serves as reference to one of those services.