DPC

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‘Digital preservation is an always-emerging challenge. As technology changes so the processes and tools of effective preservation need to adapt. Success is provisional: a commitment to constant improvement is a prerequisite. Never entirely certain what success looks like, the digital preservation community has over the years developed several proxies for success and maturity of service. The ideal of a Trusted Digital Repository has gained much traction in the literature since it was first posited in 1996, and it is now encapsulated and codified as a series of standards. The resulting requirements and checklists provide a framework for repository improvement; however, with too many demands, too little practical experience and too little transparency these standard can also be a barrier to participation. If best practice is a receding and unattainable horizon, then it can become the enemy of good practice. Practitioners and their managers simply want to know how they are doing and how they can do it better.

This joint webinar between DPC and NCDD reviews state of the art in the certification and accreditation of digital preservation. The relationships between various key standards will be delineated with a deep dive into practical implementation of the ‘Data Seal of Approval’. The utility of audit methodologies will be reviewed; the role of maturity models presented; an emerging approaches in the UK and the Netherlands will be discussed.

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The DPC, UK Data Service and Charles Beagrie Ltd are delighted to offer members a preview of the latest DPC Technology Watch Report ‘Preserving Transactional Data’ by Sara Day Thomson of the Digital Preservation Coalition. This report tackles the requirements for preserving transactional data and the accompanying challenges facing companies and institutions that aim to re-use these data for analysis or research, presenting the issues and strategies which emphasize preservation practices that facilitate re-use and reproducibility.

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In this webinar Gaby Wijers, director of the international platform LIMA that focuses on the preservation, distribution and research of media art (www.li-ma.nl), talks about how the current situation in the Netherlands is concerning the sustainability of born digital art.

Gaby shares examples from the research rapport on born digital art of the Dutch Cultural Coalition Digital Preservation (only available in Dutch) and the Transformation Digital Art project from the Dutch Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SMBK).

NCDD (the Dutch National Digital Coalition for Digital Preservation) and DPC (the British Digital Preservation Coalition) have teamed up to organize a series of monthly webinars in 2016, with alternate speakers from the British and Dutch preservation field. All webinars are recorded and made available online. Keep an eye on the agenda for upcoming webinars and other joint events.

Links to the videos Gaby tried to show during the webinar session are as follows:

• I/Eye Bill Spinhoven, 1993: http://www.li-ma.nl/site/catalogue/art/bill-spinhoven/i-eye/11700
• Se Mi Sei Vicino (If you are close to me) Sonia Cillari, 2006: http://www.li-ma.nl/site/catalogue/art/sonia-cillari/se-mi-sei-vicino-if-you-are-close-to-me/9774
• Digital Art Who Cares LIMA and SBMK, 2016: http://www.arttube.nl/en/video/Digital_Art_who_cares

More info on projects and documentation can be found on the LI-MA website: www.li-ma.nl/site/article/transformatie-digitale-kunst-peter-struycken

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The promise of an economy based on new forms of data and novel types of exploitation has generated lots of excitement in the last few years. The excitement about so-called ‘big data’ is not just from the technology side: economic commentators point to technology as the single most important success story of the last three decades. Digital technologies have continued to grow more powerful and more prevalent, even as economic models and financial paradigms have stumbled. This invitational webinar will examine the claims made for the role of technology in the economy and their foundations. It will underline in stark terms the need for digital preservation, calling into question the credibility and viability of those agencies not making not making rapid progress in establishing digital preservation best practices.

By now you’ll have heard of The Cloud. The big amorphous space out there that is the answer to anything digital. You want more storage? You need the cloud. You want a back-up copy of all of your treasured photos? You need the cloud. You want to undertake large scale high performance number crunching? You guessed it…you need the cloud. So it’s no surprise that the cloud is featuring more and more in the cultural heritage sector too. Tate Gallery, the Parliamentary Archives and the Bodleian Library have all dipped their toes, or their heads, into cloud technology. The National Library of Scotland has also been thinking about the role of the cloud, which is essentially a service that stores and manages digital information, as part of its continuing mission to preserve the nation’s digital culture. Is the cloud the answer to all our digital problems and if it is surely there’s a price tag attached to it. To find out the National Library of Scotland is about to embark on a journey of discovery with the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, National Galleries of Scotland and the Digital Preservation Coalition. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t heard of these organisations, just be assured that we are all interested in preserving digital culture for current and future generations. Our journey starts at a project called EUDAT…

The DPC welcomed University College Dublin (UCD) as its newest Associate Member last week.

Founded one hundred and sixty years ago, UCD has continued to make a unique and substantial contribution to the creation of modern Ireland and in particular to digital services through its UCD Digital Library, the UCD Institutional Repository and the national Irish Social Science Data Archive, operated through the Library.

“Digital preservation is a key part of our digital and data lifecycle,” explains Julia Barrett, UCD’s Research Services Manager. “Investing in digital preservation enables long term access to content for our users - providing greater access and increasing overall impact.”