DPC

Watch the ceremony

Watch the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony, filmed live in November 2018 at the Amsterdam Museum in the Netherlands.

Meet the Winners

Stanford University Libraries, ePADD 

2018 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Neil Chue Hong, SSI and Natalie Harrower, Digital Repository of Ireland ePADD is free and open source software developed by Stanford University Libraries and partners that supports the appraisal, processing, preservation, discovery, and delivery of email archives of potential historical or cultural value. Over the past five years, ePADD has pioneered the application of machine learning and natural language processing to confront challenges that collection donors, archivists, and researchers routinely face in donating, administering, preserving, or accessing email collections. This includes screening email for confidential, restricted, or legally-protected information, preparing email for preservation, and making the resulting files (which incorporates preservation actions taken by the repository) discoverable and accessible to researchers. Watch interview with Josh Schneider Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on ePADD

Jennifer Allen, Matthew Farrell, Shira Peltzman, Alice Prael and Dorothy Waugh; The Archivist’s Guide to Kryoflux 

2018 Winner of the DPC Award for Teaching and Communications, presented by Sally McInnes, National Library of Wales and Neil Grindley, Jisc For archivists preserving and providing access to data stored on floppy disks, the KryoFlux offers significant benefits. This floppy disk controller supports a variety of legacy encoding formats, effectively handles degraded data, and creates bit-for-bit disk images suitable for long-term preservation. Unfortunately, existing documentation for the KryoFlux is scant and assumes a level of technical knowledge largely absent from archival literature and curricula. The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux is a manual designed to fill that gap. Written specifically for archivists, it provides clear instructions for practitioners using the KryoFlux to support the preservation of important cultural heritage data. Watch interview with Dorothy Waugh Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on Archivists Guide to the Kryoflux

Anna Oates; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

2018 Winner of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation, presented by Laura Mitchell, NRS and Laura Molloy, University of Oxford The PDF/A standard is a component of many institutional repository file format policies. However, full conformance with the standard is often difficult to achieve for born-digital documents. This paper presents findings from trial migrations/normalization to PDF/A of student papers held in the Oxford University Research Archive. The study tested multiple PDF/A creation software and format validation tools in use by institutions. It further presents findings from interviews with institutional repository staff currently using the standard within their workflows. With these datasets as its basis, the paper identifies common occurrences of non-conformances with the PDF/A standard and discusses to what extent these non-conformances present preservation risks. Watch interview with Anna Oates Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar with Anna Oates

Crossrail and Transport for London; Archiving Crossrail 

2018 Winner of the Open Data Institute (ODI) Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector, presented by David Beardmore, ODI and Sheila Morrissey, Portico The Crossrail Act giving permission for what is now called the Elizabeth Line to be built operated and maintained received Royal Assent in July 2008. Over the next 10 years Europe’s biggest infrastructure project at £14.8 billion has integrated the information developed from over 25 main design contracts, 30 advanced work contracts and 60+ logistics and main works contracts. Crossrail embraced BIM (Building Information Modelling) with a single set of linked applications shared with contractors across all phases of the project. The challenge for the archive team was to preserve a heavily interlinked dataset without having to retain legacy software. Watch interview with Alastair Goodall Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on Archiving Crossrail

IFI Irish Film Archive; IFI Loopline Project 

2018 Winner of the National Archives Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy, presented by Valerie Johnson, The National Archives and Neil Jefferies Frustrated by budget constraints & unresponsive commercial vendors the IFI Irish Film Archive was inspired by the FLOSS community to develop a suite of 55 open source scripts (IFIScripts) that support our digital preservation activities in a sustainable and efficient manner. Solving problems in-house has reduced our maintenance costs and vendor fees and allowed us to take control of our preservation workflows. Not only has IFIScripts helped us to fulfil our digital preservation remit within our limited staff and financial resources, but we sharing all our tools with the preservation community on Githib for others to use and adapt. We are currently completing our first end- to- end application of the IFI Scripts on a preservation projection for a collection of material from a leading Irish film production company called Loopline Films. Watch interview with Kasandra O'Connell and Kieran O'Leary Watch DPA2018 Winners Webinar on the IFI Irish Film Archive Loopline Project

Barbara Sierman

2018 Winner of the DPC Fellowship Award, presented by Richard Ovenden, Bodleian Libraries        Watch interview with Barbara Sierman

The Digital Preservation Awards 2018 Finalists 

The Software Sustainability Institute Award for Research and Innovation ePADD, University of Stanford VeraPDF, Open Preservation Foundation Contributions towards Defining the Discipline, Sarah Higgins - Aberystwyth University Flashback: Preservation of legacy digital collections, British Library	The DPC Award for Teaching and Communications Evidence-­based postgraduate education in digital information management, University College Dublin Leren Preserveren (Learning Digital Preservation), Digital Heritage Network and Het Nieuwe Instituut Ibadan/Liverpool Digital Curation Curriculum Review Project, Universities of Ibadan and Liverpool The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux, Universities of Texas, Duke, Los Angeles, Yale and Emory
The National Records of Scotland Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation 'Navigating the PDF/A Standard: A Case Study of Theses' by Anna Oates, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 'Preserving the past: the challenge of digital archiving within a Scottish Local Authority' by Lorraine Murray, University of Glasgow 'Essay on the record-making and record-keeping issues implicit in Wearables' by Philippa Turner, University of Liverpool	The Open Data Institute Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third sector Music Treasures, Stichting Omroep Muziek (SOM) Archiving Crossrail - Europe’s largest infrastructure project, Crossrail and Transport for London Heritage preservation of contemporary dance and choreography through research and innovation in digital documentation and annotation of creative processes, ICKamsterdam and Motion Bank
The National Archives Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy IFI Open Source tools: IFIscripts/ Loopline project, IFI Irish Film Archive Cloud-Enabled Preservation of Life in the 20th Century White House, White House Historical Association Digital Library Design, Deliver, Embed: Establishing Digital Transfer in Parliament, UK Parliamentary Archives Local Authority Digital Preservation Consortium: Dorset History Centre, West Sussex Records Office, Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre In the category of 'Safeguarding the Digital Legacy' The judges also offered a special commendation to the GI Press Collection

The DPC extends grateful thanks to our international panel of Judges and all of our sponsors who made the Digital Preservation Awards 2018 a possibility:

Watch the ceremony

Watch the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony, which took place online for World Digital Preservation Day on 5th November 2020.

Meet the Winners 

NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation Revision Project   

2020 Winner of the International Council on Archives Award for Collaboration and Cooperation presented by Anthea Seles and Neil Grindley The updated Levels of Digital Preservation represent a codification of current technological practices for long-term preservation of digital resources in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.  These guidelines are presented in an easy to understand matrix designed to be useful for newcomers and experts alike.  The redesign looks at five functional areas of digital preservation and recommends a tiered set of practices that map to four increasingly robust levels of digital preservation.  Available in multiple languages, this update also includes an assessment tool and technological implementation guidance for using the levels. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation

Levels of Born Digital Access  

2020 Winner of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Award for Research and Innovation presented by Neil Chue Hong and Sally McInnes The Levels of Born-Digital Access provides a tiered set of format-agnostic practices to facilitate and improve access to born-digital materials across five distinct areas -- Accessibility, Description, Researcher Support and Discovery, Security, and Tools. In addition to defining a set of recommended baseline access requirements, the Levels also lays out concrete and actionable recommendations that institutions can implement according to their needs, resources, and abilities. Developed using an iterative and collaborative approach, the Levels document is responsive to practitioners’ and researchers’ needs, while also serving as a potentially inclusive model for future standards development. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with Levels of Born Digital Access

Digital Records Curation Programme  

2020 Winner of the Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications presented by Marcel Ras and Sheila Morrissey The Digital Records Curation Programme (DRCP) is a volunteer-led initiative of the International Council on Archives’ Africa Programme aiming to build capacity among African archival educators. It took existing free resources, packaging them into easy to use teaching materials for low-resource environments. The DRCP recognises that digital records are proliferating in organisations, industries and countries not always well-equipped to manage and preserve them, compared to technical know-how developed and used in more highly-resourced contexts. DRCP materials constitute a modular course that can be adapted by lecturers to suit the local working context, delivered ‘as is’ or integrated into existing curricula. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with DRCP

Lotte Wijsman with ‘The Significant Properties of Spreadsheets: Stakeholder Analysis’  

2020 Winner of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation presented by Susan Corrigall and Angela Beking Spreadsheets are reliant on software that could become obsolete. When this materialises, the file must be converted to an alternative format and, as a  consequence, a loss of information could occur. It is therefore important to define what is significant and should be preserved. This study develops a framework on how to assess which properties stakeholders deem to be significant. Statistical analyses combined with a Spreadsheet Complexity Analyser show that objective criteria of a spreadsheet are strong predictors of significant properties. This study also provides guidance to archives for best practices concerning stakeholder analysis in the context of significant properties. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with Lotte Wijsman

UNHCR Records and Archives  

2020 Winner of the DPC Award for the Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector presented by Karen Sampson and Neil Jefferies UNHCR is at the forefront of one of the most critical crises facing the world in the 21st century – that of displacement. 75.9 million people - 1 percent of the world’s population - have fled their homes due to conflict or persecution. Preserving ‘the history of now’, for present and future generations has never been more complex or essential. UNHCR Records and Archives Section (RAS) preserves not just the legacy of UNHCR work but also of humanity. Though small in size, it supports a global staff of over 17,000 and has an ambitious vision. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with UNHCR Archive

UK Web Archive: celebrating 15 years  

2020 Winner of The National Archives (UK) Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy presented by John Sheridan and April Miller The UK Web Archive celebrated its 15 year anniversary in 2020. From its beginnings, UKWA has drawn attention to the value of communication on the web, the high risk of loss for this content, and the need for a national programme to preserve digital communications. UKWA has made a sustained and powerful public case for the preservation of born digital communication and publication in the UK, and has worked collaboratively with libraries and other institutions around the world to support web archiving. Watch the DPA2020 Winners Webinar with UKWA

Micky Lindlar 

2020 The DPC Fellowship Award, presented by Richard Ovenden Read Micky's acceptance speech on the DPC blog

Find out about the Digital Preservation Awards 2020 Finalists 

Drawing together the finalists' presentatations from the #WeMissiPRES event in September 2020, hear our Digital Preservation Awards judges as they introduce and reflect on the excellent, inspiring and innovative people and projects they have encountered throughout the awards process.

Watch and learn about each of our incredible finalists as they tell us more about their work.

The Digital Preservation Awards are made possible by the expertise and support provided by our international panel of Judges, and funding from our sponsors.

Members please login to watch the webinar recording

Members please login to watch the webinar recording

Members please login to watch the webinar recording 

The project team at George Washington University Libraries give us an introduction to Social Feed Manager – an open source web application which empowers social media researchers, students, and cultural heritage institutions to define and collect datasets from social media services. Its development is led by the team at George Washington University Libraries, made up of software developers, archivists, and librarians. The webinar is designed for new users who are building collections and includes a short demo of the tool.

Members please login to watch the webinar recording

Rhiannon’s research is in the area of digital preservation with a particular focus on film, games, and time-based media art. Her work looks at documenting context for media objects and documenting properties that are not intrinsic to an object's code but still essential to long-term understanding. She looks critically at the development of new archival practice to examine social and political implications of digital preservation tools and will talk to us about elements of her thesis and what bearing these have on upcoming revisions of OAIS.

<p

Members please login to watch webinar recording

Rhiannon’s research is in the area of digital preservation with a particular focus on film, games, and time-based media art. Her work looks at documenting context for media objects and documenting properties that are not intrinsic to an object's code but still essential to long-term understanding. She looks critically at the development of new archival practice to examine social and political implications of digital preservation tools and will talk to us about elements of her thesis and what bearing these have on upcoming revisions of OAIS.

Members please login to watch webinar recording

Head of Curation and Preservation Services for MIT Libraries, Nancy McGovern shares her insights into Preservation Planning and Maturity Modelling.

Members please login to watch webinar recording

All organisations in all sectors create digital materials, either as part of their organisational records, by digitising non-digital collections in order to enhance access to them, or they may be created digitally (“born digital”). However, they come into being, they will need to be managed as early as possible in their life-cycle, preferably at the design stage, but if not as soon as practicable thereafter, if they are to remain accessible as long as they are required. Practical experience and expertise in this area is still relatively limited so there is a clear need for guidance to ensure that the significant opportunities are not overwhelmed by the equally significant threats.

The Digital Preservation Handbook aims to identify good practice in creating, managing and preserving digital materials and also to provide a range of practical tools to help with that process. Following on from our first introduction to this resource by Neil Beagrie, the DPC's Sharon McMeekin will point us to the many examples of good practice contained within the Handbook and will suggest ways in which institutions can begin to address digital preservation. By providing a strategic overview of the key issues, discussion and guidance on strategies and activities, and pointers to key projects and reports, the Handbook aims to provide guidance for institutions and individuals and a range of tools to help them identify and take appropriate actions.