DPC

LOCKSS, Ongoing from 1999

Project website: http://www.lockss.org/

Partners: British Library; Cambridge University Library; Imperial College; University of Leeds; University of Edinburgh; University of Glasgow

LOCKSS ("Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") is open source software that provides librarians with an easy and inexpensive way to collect, store, preserve, and provide access to their own, local copy of authorized content they purchase. Currently, more than 80 libraries and 50 publishers from around the world are using the software. In addition, the Stanford LOCKSS team is collaborating with institutions through the LOCKSS Alliance to further collection, technical, and community development.

E-Journal Archiving Study, Completed October 2003

Full report: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ejournalsfinal.pdf [PDF, 342Kb]

Partners: JISC

Archiving E-Journals Consultancy - Final Report, October 2003, by Maggie Jones. The consultancy explored issues associated with implementing the archiving clauses of the JISC/NESLI Model Licence Report Commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Full report available via the JISC website.

Feasibility Study on E-Prints, Completed October 2003

Full report: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/e-prints_report_final.pdf [PDF, 1,018Kb]

Partners: Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS); Estonian Business Archives; SHERPA; University of Nottingham

Feasibility and Requirements Study on Preservation of E-Prints. Report Commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), AHDS as lead partner. Report published October 29, 2003, by Hamish James, Arts and Humanities Data Service, Raivo Ruusalepp, Estonian Business Archives, Sheila Anderson, Arts and Humanities Data Service, Stephen Pinfield, SHERPA.

Oxford Digital Library, Ongoing from July 2001

Website: http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/

Partners: Oxford University Library Service (OULS); Mellon Foundation

The Oxford Digital Library (ODL) is a digitisation project which aims to develop an overarching infrastructure with planned content creation, management, and delivery. It has developed standards for ensuring long-term access to the digital content created through its programmes. Operational from July 2001, the project is undergoing continuous development and has been funded from within Oxford University and from the Mellon Foundation.

The National Archives (UK) Digital Archive, Ongoing from 2001

Further information: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/digitalarchive/

Partners: The National Archives (UK)

The Digital Archive at the National Archives offers secure storage for selected electronic government records and provides access to them via linked PCs in the Public Reading Rooms at the Kew site.

PRONOM, Ongoing from 2001

Project website: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/

Partners: The National Archives (UK)

PRONOM was developed by the National Archives for managing information about the file formats used to store electronic records, and the software applications needed to render these formats. It is intended for free use by anyone needing to preserve electronic records over the long term and is under continuous development. PRONOM release 3 is publicly available on the Internet and the database contains over 250 software products, 550 file formats and 100 manufacturers (as of 2003) and is growing.

DAAT: Digital Asset Assessment Tool, October 2004 - June 2006

Further Information: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_daat

Partners: ULCC; AHDS; National Preservation Office; The National Archives (UK); The British
Library; Kings College London; School of Advanced Study of the University of London; Digital Preservation
Coalition

This project will develop a digital preservation assessment tool for use within the UK HE/FE and research, learning and teaching communities.  The proposal will provide those responsible for managing digital resources in a variety of institutional settings, including libraries, archives, data centres, computer services and research teams, with a valuable tool for identifying the preservation needs of their digital holdings.  This project was funded under the JISC Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (4/04) programme.

MoPark Metadata Options Appraisal, 14th June 2004 - 30th September 2006

Project website: http://www.mopark.net/

Funder: Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park
The CDLR is carrying out a metadata options appraisal for a project called MoPark. MoPark aims to encourage green tourism within the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park through the creation and population of a digital multimedia repository and management system.

CMS Metadata Interoperability Project: Ensuring Metadata Interoperability Across Scottish Content Management Systems and Digital Repositories, 1st June 2005 - 30th April 2006

Project website: http://cms.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/

Partners: Scottish Museums Council; National Library of Scotland

A SLIC funded project aiming to establish, document, and disseminate guidelines for best practice in the choice and use of CMS metadata for the management of simple and complex digital objects in an interoperable Scottish Common Information Environment.

STARGATE, 28th October 2005 - 28th May 2006

Project website: http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/stargate/; http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue47/robertson/

Partners: Heriot Watt, University Journal of Digital Information; Professor Tom Wilson (Information Research: an international electronic journal); Library and Information Research Group (Library and Information Research); CILIPS/SLIC (Information Scotland)

The STARGATE project will explore the use of static repositories as a means of exposing publisher metadata to OAI-based disclosure, discovery and alerting services within the JISC IE and beyond.

Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (paradigm), October 2004 – October 2006

Project website: http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/
Featured DPC Members' Project No. 5: University of Oxford; University of Manchester

The Universities of Oxford and Manchester have established collecting profiles in modern political papers. The papers of contemporary politicians - that will become the research materials of tomorrow - are being comprehensively created in electronic form. The exemplar strategies that this project will develop with political papers will be of use for any institution which collects, preserves, and maintains access to private papers. This project has been funded under the http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_404">JISC Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (4/04) programme.

PRESERV (PREServation Eprint SERVices), October 2004 – September 2006

Further information: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_preserv
Featured DPC Members' Project No. 4: University of Southampton; The National Archives (UK);
The British Library; University of Oxford

PRESERV aims to implement an ingest service based on the OAIS reference model for institutional archives built using Eprints software. Working with the National Archives, the project will link Eprints through a Web service to PRONOM software for identification and verification of file formats. The project will emphasise automation, will provide modular tools for capturing metadata and will enable the identification and verification of file formats. The project will scope a technology watch service to populate and update PRONOM where full automation is not feasible for file format recognition. This project has been funded under the http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_404">JISC Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (4/04) programme.

SHERPA DP, October 2004 – October 2006

Project website: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=project_sherpa2

Featured DPC Members' Project No. 1: Arts and Humanities Data Service; Consortium of
Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL); University of Nottingham

The SHERPA Digital Preservation (DP) project aims to create a collaborative, shared preservation environment for the SHERPA institutional repositories project framed around the Open Archiving Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. The project will bring together the SHERPA institutional repository systems with the preservation repository established by the Arts and Humanities Data Service to create an environment that fully addresses all the requirements of the different phases within the life cycle of digital information. This project has been funded under the JISC Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (4/04) programme.

The DPC campaigns for digital preservation and long term access to be a feature of public policy and routinely advises Government and related agencies on issues that are relevant to our members and our mandate. 

The DPC Board has adopted a set of principles for the DPC's engagement with public policy and direct advocacy.  While this document is due for renewal, it lays out in clear terms the values of the Coalition and how and when the DPC will intervene in public policy matters. Download the full policy [PDF 332KB].

Our responses are published as a commentary of public policy consultations relating to digital preservation:

• Scottish Government Finance and Public Administration Committee Budget Scrutiny 2024 - 2025 consultation on funding for culture submitted 18 August 2023

• Australian National Cultural Policy Submission  submitted 22 August 2022

• Response to the National Archives of Australia Request for DPC Feedback on Exposure Draft of Building Trust in the Public Record: managing information and data for government and community, submitted 13th August 2020

• Letter to the Editor of the Telegraph Newspaper entitled COVID-19 Inquiry: Digital by Default, published 24th July 2020

• Response to Call for Evidence: Impact of Covid-19 on DCMS sectors, submitted 19th June 2020

• Joint statement entitled COVID-19: The duty to document does not cease in a crisis, it becomes more essential, published 4th May 2020

• DPC Response to Public Data Corporation and Open Data Consultation, 11 November 2011: DPC has responded to two connected consultations from the Cabinet Office on proposals for the Data Policy for a proposed Public Data Corporation and for the UK government's Open Data Policy. The DPC believes that open data should be planned for the long-term otherwise the opportunities that it creates will be unsustainable and underdeveloped. Four practical implications follow from this principle: open data needs to be signposted predictably so that links and references to data are resilient; open data needs to be robust in terms of format, media and description to avoid the inadvertent disruptions caused by obsolescence and media failure; changes to open data need to be tracked and published to ensure that the integrity and authenticity is not lost; open data needs to be predictable in form enabling comparison of performance through time and facilitating the creation and refinement of analytical tools.

  • See the original consultation on Making Open Data Real
  • See  DPC Response to the Making Open Data Real consultation
  • See the original consultation on Data Policy for a Public Data Corporation
  • See  DPC Response to Public Data Corporation consultation

• DPC Response to EU Science Information Policy Consultation, 08 September 2011: The DPC has responded to a consultation from the EC regarding science information policy, noting that the impacts sought from improved access to scientific information are only viable where sufficient attention is paid to preservation. Preservation has a particular importance for scientific information because meaningful innovation is necessarily responsive previous generations of research. In that sense, preservation of appropriate research outputs is essential to all sciences, especially for unrepeatable experiments or unique moments of discovery. Aspirations about access to information are meaningless without commensurate actions that to ensure preservation. We welcome all actions that will encourage a dialogue between and within member states to ensure the preservation of scientific information and we call on the EU to engage in that dialogue as a matter of urgency, using existing examples of best practice to help build capacity.

  • The original consultation from the EC
  • See the full text of the DPC response

• DPC Response to Second Consultation on Legal Deposit, December 2010: The DPC has responded to the second phase of consultation on Electronic Legal Deposit noting the essential relationship between preservation and access. We note and welcome the proposal that extend legal deposit to include charged content as well as content to which access is restricted. This will create the conditions where a more rounded and more valuable national archive can be created. Experience in digital preservation shows that normalization and adherence to standards in the creation of digital resources are advantageous to long term access. Therefore we have some questions pertaining to the practicality of provisions regarding deposit of materials, in particular those regulations that leave the medium and quality of electronic deposits at the discretion of publishers, and those regulations that pertain to adapting content for preservation. If poorly implemented, these provisions could have the inadvertent result of making preservation intractable or excessively complicated. We recognise that recommendations from the DPC are best focussed on those topics where we can offer specialist commentary. Therefore it is not our intention to provide a detailed scrutiny of each element of these regulations. However it is our view that preservation is only sensible within the context of access, and that preservation should be configured around the impact that comes with access. Therefore we have commented on a small number of access issues that we believe have a bearing on the case for preservation. In January 2010 the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) consulted on draft regulations for the legal deposit of ‘free of charge’ electronic publications – the ‘free web’.  This consultation was intended to be the first part of a two part process and the DPC responded arguing inter alia that the second phase of proposals be presented without delay as arguably the ‘paid web’ includes material of lasting value and that until regulations were introduced this element of our collected digital memory would be at risk. In September DCMS published a paper for the second phase of the consultation process.  The regulations discussed this time apply to a much broader range of material including publications for which there is a charge, publications which are subject to access restrictions and material compiled by queries from databases.  It excludes sound and film recordings and unpublished material.

  • Details of this consultation are available here and the draft regulations to which the consultation applies are here
  • Full text of the DPC response is available here [pdf, 340KB]

• DPC Response to Public Records Review, 30 July 2010: The DPC has responded to the consultation on the Public records review, welcoming the explicit statement that digitized and ‘born digital’ materials constitute a public record, noting and supporting the focus on informational content and the consequent need for ‘technology proofing’ and the management of formats.  The DPC has offered its assistance in identifying and resolving issues that may arise. Research shows that clear advice about the preservation of digital materials is both in high demand and can be difficult to procure, so we note the new role for the Keeper of the Public Record to advise and inspect archives.  The DPC has offered its help in two ways: to assist the Keeper in the production of specialist advice notes; and to support the Keeper in the wider dissemination of advice to a diverse audience that is hungry for solutions.  'This represents an opportunity to build capacity for digital preservation in a diverse range of authorities' explained William Kilbride, Executive Director of the DPC.

  • Full text of the DPC response to the consultation .
  • Full text of the consultation.

• DPC Response to Review of Exceptions, 31 March 2010: The DPC has published its response to the recent Intellectual Property Office consultation on exceptions to copyright law with a detailed discussion of how these proposals impact on digital preservation. In summary, the DPC warmly welcomes the proposal to permit multiple copies to be created for preservation purposes. It notes and welcomes the proposal to broaden the types of content that can qualify for this exception and welcomes the proposal that extends this exception to a wider range of institutions. The DPC seeks a number of clarifications to ensure that perfectly reasonable preservation actions are not inadvertently inhibited. For example the Coalition want to ensure that institutions are not prevented from collaborative preservation and is concerned that attempting to restrict preservation copying to an institution’s permanent collection may interfere with perfectly laudable and reasonable rescue and appraisal efforts.

  • The original consultation is online here from the Intellectual Property Office.
  • See the full text of our response here . [PDF 430KB]

• DPC Response to First Consultation on Legal Deposit, March 2010: The DPC has published its response to the recent consultation from the Department for Culture Media and Sport on 'UK Online Publications'. The DPC has welcomed the progress which has been made by the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel on recommendations for collecting digital material and is eager that the momentum recently achieved is maintained so that continuing progress can be made. It warmly welcomes the proposal for regulation-based harvesting and calls for early implementation of this proposal, offering the assistance of the DPC in capacity building for staff and tools which this will necessitate. There is a range of opinions within the DPC's membership regarding the access provisions within the Proposals. The position of the DPC itself, however, remains clear that future access to the harvested materials at any level will be impossible without the safeguards that rigorous attention to preservation provides. 

  • The original consultation document is online here
  • Read the DPC's full response [pdf, 385kb]

• DPC Responds to Archives for the 21st Century, 15 December 2009: The DPC has welcomed a new government consultation by arguing that 'the challenge of managing digital information is one that the UK is well placed to address'. On the 6th May 2009 the National Archives, on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government, Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Ministry of Justice, released a consultation on the future of archival services in the UK. It calls for better and fewer archives; better leadership and training in the archives sector; better electronic access to and wider participation in archives; and greater attention to the challenges of digital data. The DPC Response to the report concentrates on the latter of these issues. It offers support to the project team in meeting the challenge of digital data and it provides examples of the ways in which DPC members have already ensured that the UK is uniquely well placed to face the challenge of digital data.

  • Full DPC Response to Archives for the 21st Century [PDF]
  • More information and the full consultation can document be found here

• National Heritage Science Strategy Consultation, December 2009: The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry on Science and Heritage called for the production of a new National Heritage Science Strategy, a task that is now being taken forward by the National Heritage Science Strategy Steering Group.  Work has progressed in four packages: at the time of writing 3 reports have been released for consultation and a fourth document - the strategy iteslf is in development. The DPC has responded to this consultation observing that digital resources constitute a heritage which is worthy of preservation, and that developments in heritage science in relation to digital heritage will be better served where they are aligned with existing and forthcoming initiatives.

  • Reports from the National Heritage Science Strategy [external]
  • The role of science in the management of the UK's heritage: A response from the Digital Preservation Coalition [pdf]
  • The use of science to enhance our understanding of the past: A response from the Digital Preservation Coalition [pdf]
  • Understanding Capacity in the Heritage Science Sector: A response from the Digital Preservation Coalition [pdf]

• DPC welcomes Digital Britain Interim Report and calls for greater clarity and consideration of digital legacy, especially where this pertains to content, March 2009

  • More information and the full Digital Britain: The Interim Report can be found here
  • PDF of Full DPC Response to Digital Britain: The Interim Report (March 2009) (70KB)
  • The Digital Britain discussion site

Collaboration forms a central role in many of the activities of the DPC and is one of the core objectives in our current Strategic Plan. We work to facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and development between the members of the Coalition and also the wider world.

There are compelling reasons and, in some cases, political pressure, to engage in greater collaboration within and between organisations in order effectively to confront and overcome the challenges of digital preservation. The range of skills required to do this demands flexibility within organisational structures to facilitate working in multi-disciplinary teams. There is a significant overlap in the digital preservation issues being faced by all organisations and across all sectors so it makes sense to pool expertise and experience. Communication with key stakeholders, using terms and language understood by them (see Advocacy) will play a major part in building and maintaining collaborations.

Read more about collaboration and how to get involved, in the Digital Preservation Handbook.

DPC Projects

Where our members will derive a direct benefit, the DPC contributes to project consortia with other specialist organisations from across the world in order to further research and insight into the field of digital preservation.

Find out more about our projects.

Partnerships and Alliances

Allied Organisations are organisations who collaborate with the Coalition on specific activities and goals and participate by invitation in selected activities. They can include individual commercial organisations who work with the Coalition to promote a dialogue with industry on digital preservation issues, and developing solutions and standards, or other national and international organisations.

Partnership with an allied organisation may be for a finite period of time and/or for specific activities as agreed between the Coalition and the allied organisation. Where appropriate it may be open-ended and termination of partnership would be by six months' written notice on either side. Allied organisations may be expected to contribute agreed levels of funding and/or staff resources for shared activities and/or access to Coalition events or resources. Depending on the nature of the partnership, this may involve the payment of a subscription. The level of subscription, where applicable, will be determined by the Board of Directors.

Allied Individuals are individuals with specific expertise and experience invited by the Coalition to contribute to the Advisory Council and/or other selected activities. Appointment as an allied individual is for a period of 12 months and is renewed automatically annually unless written notice is given on either side.

Meet our Allied Organisations.

Working Groups

From time to time the we bring small groups together to work on specific issues shared between members, and the DPC is frequently invited to contribute to working parties organised by other groups. Details of these working parties and task forces are published here.

• Web Archiving and Preservation Task Force (DPC-WAPTF)
• Public Records Act (Scotland) Implementation Group
• Capacity Enhancement and Peer Review Task Force (DPC-CERT)
• Editorial Board for the DPC Technology Watch Reports
• Career Development and Training Task Force (DPC-CDT)
• Bedern Group - Digital Preservation and the Historic Environment (Bedern Group) (login required)

Find out more

Connecting the Bits

Connecting the Bits is a day-long networking and planning event designed to help members keep in touch with each other and with the state of the art in digital preservation. It's a chance for the members of our coalition to set the agenda for the DPC's work for the coming year. The event is an "unconference style" day of knowledge exchange on digital preservation challenges. The unconference format is like a conference except there is no pre-determined theme or programme: the agenda is generated by participants in the morning, then delivered in the afternoon. This format privileges debate and discussion, and it ensures that anyone with a burning issue or success story has a chance to share it.

The next Connecting the Bits will be held in the last week of June 2017. Watch this space for more information...

The Digital Preservation Coalition exists to help create a political and organisational climate responsive to the need for digital preservation. This requires a commitment to advocacy on behalf of the digital preservation community.

We help key decision-makers and opinion-formers understand the opportunities and challenges of long-term access to digital collections and encourage them to act, ensuring that public and institutional policy, legislation and regulation enable robust digital preservation infrastructures. We understand and articulate the needs of our members, encouraging and supporting the development of tools, services and standards that are of benefit to all.

Talking to others in your organisation about Digital Preservation

The Executive Guide on Digital Preservation provides practitioners with a combination of generic and specific messages and motivators designed to communicate with senior executives, legislators and budget holders, as well as decision and policy makers with a view to embedding the value of digital preservation at the core of every organization.

Start your internal advocacy campaign with the Executive Guide on Digital Preservation

You might also find useful:

How to Talk to IT about Digital Preservation

Making the Case for Digital Preservation in your organisation

The DPC is an independent authority which represents the digital preservation community, providing assurance and support to all of its members. The DPC identifies the benefits and value of digital collections, helping our members make the case for digital preservation within their own organisations, opening lines of communication and facilitiating discussion.

Often when organisations try to adapt or expand their activities in a way that requires additional resources to accommodate its digital preservation activities, it is typical for senior management to request that a business case or briefing is prepared. This should outline the resources required, what the resource will be used to achieve and how this new investment will benefit the organisation. The Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit provides an array of helpful information to assist in the construction of a business case, from planning and preparation all the way through to polishing and communicating the finished case for digital preservation in your organisation.

Consult the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit

Responding to Public Policy initiatives

The DPC campaigns for digital preservation and long term access to be a feature of public policy and routinely advises Government and related agencies on issues that are relevant to our members and our mandate. We publish our responses as a commentary of public policy consultations relating to digital preservation.

Read our responses

Celebrating greatness in the digital preservation community

The Digital Preservation Awards

Every two years the the DPC holds its prestigious Digital Preservation Awards - the most prominent celebration of achievement for those people and organisations who have made significant and innovative contributions to maintaining a digital legacy. 

A carefully selected group of expert judges review a series of projects and services which have been completed since the close of the previous award and which have been proposed by the community.  They create a short list of nominees who are interviewed about their work and then select the project which they think deserves particular attention.  The winners are announced at a specially convened ceremony and the winners receive a trophy, certificate, cash prize and international recognition.

Find out more about the Digital Preservation Awards

World Digital Preservation Day

World Digital Preservation Day is held on the first Thursday of every November and brings together the digital preservation community to celebrate their work - the collections they have preserved, the access they have maintained and the understanding they have fostered by preserving digital materials.

The aim of World Digital Preservation Day is to create greater awareness of digital preservation that will translate into a wider understanding which permeates all aspects of society – business, policy making, personal good practice.

Find out more about World Digital Preservation Day

A key role for the DPC is to empower and develop our members’ workforces. Our members operate in a competitive and dynamic knowledge environment where roles and responsibilities of staff are constantly changing. It is crucial, therefore, that staff remain informed of, trained in and confident with the new developments and tools which are released and made available. This is particularly important when existing staff are retrained to embrace a new skills set.

The DPC addresses this issue by facilitating training and support activities and creating practitioner-focused material and events:

The Digital Preservation Handbook

The Digital Preservation Handbook identifies good practice in creating, managing and preserving digital materials and suggests ways in which institutions can begin to address their digital preservation challenge. Full of helpful material, tips and videos, the Handbook provides a range of practical tools to help get started in Digital Preservation.

Read the Digital Preservation Handbook

Novice to Know-How: Online Digital Preservation Training

Part of The National Archives’ new digital capacity building strategy, ‘Plugged In, Powered Up,’ the Novice to Know-How learning pathway aims to provide beginners with the skills required to develop and implement simple digital preservation workflows within their organisation.

It starts with a broad introduction to digital preservation issues and describes the measures we can take to address these. It then delves into potential workflows in more detail, examining the issues to consider, steps to take, and technological solutions that can deployed. An emphasis is placed on free, easy-to-use solutions, and includes detailed demos of how to use the key tool, DROID. Course content is provided as mix of video, text, and quizzes.

Register for online digital preservation training

The DPC Career Development Fund

The DPC Career Development Fund provides funding for members to undertake training and personal development opportunities in two ways: through regular Advertised Calls for grants on the DPC News page, and members are also welcome to apply for grants for Member Self-Identified Opportunities they believe will help build digital preservation capacity within their organization. The DPC also invites training providers to discuss the possibility and appropriateness of offering Career Development Fund grants for such opportunities by contacting the Training & Grants Manager.

Visit the DPC Career Development Fund page to find and apply for grants

Getting Started and Making Progress in Digital Preservation

The DPC offers two day-long training courses for those looking to start addressing their digital preservation challenges. Both courses are aimed at an introductory level and aim to provide delegates with practical advice, skills and solutions that they will be able to implement at their own organisation.

'Getting Started with Digital Preservation' introduces delegates to common digital preservation concepts and issues before walking them through the first steps they can take to manage their digital assets. This includes bit-level preservation, assessing their digital preservation maturity, undertaking a risk management exercise and creating a digital asset register.

'Making Progress with Digital Preservation' provides delegates with guidance on the 'next steps' in developing their digital preservation capability. Presentations and exercises will cover building a business case, drafting a digital preservation policy, developing a competent digital preservation workforce and making practical preservation decisions.

Visit the DPC Events page to find and register for upcoming courses

Click to view resources from Getting Started and Making Progress events

Member Briefing Days and Invitational Events 

DPC events provide more detailed analysis of specific topics relevant to digital preservation, often associated with Technology Watch Reports.

Click to browse resources and materials from all past events. 

External Training Opportunities

A wide range of digital preservation training and development opportunities are offered by agencies and institutions around the world. A selection of courses offered by DPC members includes

• Aberystwyth University
• Kings College London
• University College Dublin
• University of Glasgow
• University of Salford
• University of Sheffield

Following on from Sabine Himmelsbach’s excellent introduction to digital art conservation at the key note, the theme was continued with the morning’s first session.

Towards a Risk Model for Emulation-based Preservation Strategies: A Case Study from the Software-based Art Domain

The first session was presented by Klaus Rechert from the University of Freiburg in Germany.

The British Library has worked with Freiburg and the Emulation as a Service product, so it was interesting to have the opportunity to hear more about the workings and developments of emulation from their point of view. After a brief history of emulation, Klaus confirmed that despite great progress, emulation and virtualisation aren't quite there yet.

Of the major issues to resolve, the scalability is now mostly solved but sustainability and the long-term plans are not yet in place.

He went on to discuss a case study of software-based artworks with the goal of the project to highlight preservation risks of the emulation strategy. The computer system is the part that changes and that is where the emulation comes in.

External dependencies include artefact description & configuration, software environment & configuration and hardware environment. The key preservation risk is when the hardware or equivalent becomes obsolete which it where the emulation strategy is focussed. Acquisition and preparation is an analysis of what is available. You need to determine the environment and factors. If you don't have the environment, build one!

It also important to identify dependencies and whilst the dependent software may not change, the licensing does!

What the setup looks like!

Digital Curation Centre: 3-year project funding initially, from 2004

Partners: JISC; eSCP; DCC             

The initial three-year project to develop a national Digital Curation Centre (DCC) is a key aim of the JISC Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy 2002-05.  The DCC will focus on research in data curation, file format information, tools, testbeds and certification and advisory services.  Funded jointly by JISC and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC) e-Science Core Programme, to focus on the needs of UK FE and HE, but with the possibility of extending to and developing additional funding from, other sectors.

Dorothy Dunnett Disks Project: Ongoing from 2004

Contact: Robin Smith

Partners: National Library of Scotland

To use electronic files in Dorothy Dunnett archive as a pilot project to develop accessioning, appraisal, migration and descriptive processes for manuscript material in electronic format

E-Science Data Curation Audit: Completed February 2004

Partners: JISC

This consultancy aimed to establish the provision and future requirements for curation of primary research data being generated within e-science in the UK.  The audit included the e-science core programme but extended beyond this to other e-science research and primary research data.

Data Curation for e-science in the UK

Scottish Party Political Press Releases Preservation and Access pilot: Ongoing from 2004

Contact: Paul Cunnea

Partners: National Library of Scotland

Pilot to investigate long-term preservation and access options for e-mail publications, using Scottish PPRs as case study.

E-Learning Project: Completed January 2004

Long-Term Retention and Reuse of E-Learning Objects and Materials

Partners: JISC; AHDS

A feasibility study to assess long-term retention and re-use of e-learning objects and materials, part of the JISC Continuing Access and Digital Preservation Strategy 2002-5. Undertaken by the Institute for Computer Based Learning (ICBL) at Heriot-Watt, with support from AHDS.

ICA work-book on ERM: Completed 2004

Partners: ULCC

International Council on Archives (ICA) workbook on electronic records management (ERM) is a practical handbook aimed at archivists, primarily in government, and also for IT staff. The handbook has been created via ICA funding together with volunteer effort from members: Electronic Records: A Workbook for Archivists (ICA Study 16)

Representation and Rendering Project (file formats): Completed February 2004

Partners: JISC, University of Leeds

File Format Representation and Rendering Project, which aimed to develop tried and tested technologies, conceived by the Cedars and CAMiLEON projects. Survey and assessment of sources of information on file formats and software documentation, Final report produced by the Representation and Rendering Project, University of Leeds, (undated)

Survey and assessment of sources of information on file formats and software documentation