DPC

Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum.

It was great to be at iPRES 2023 in person again this year.  I was privileged to be invited onto a panel called ‘Tipping Point’ that was run by Paul Stokes and Karen Colbron from Jisc.  The panel questioned the premise that there is so much data being generated each year that we are at the point where we no longer have the ability to process it in any meaningful way, let alone curate and preserve it.  Panellists included Helen Hockx-Yu, Kate Murray, Nancy McGovern, Stephen Abrams, Tim Gollins and William Kilbride.   As you can imagine, the discussion was varied, insightful and thought provoking!  It was perhaps my favourite session at iPRES this year (other than the ever inspiring keynotes). 

For my very small part on the panel, I raised the issue of environmental sustainability and climate change, as did some of the other panellists. 

As an aside, environmental sustainability was a recurring theme of iPRES 2023 and built upon a similar thread that ran through last year’s conference.   A shout out goes to a great paper by Mikko Tiainen and colleagues from CSC on Calculating the Carbon Footprint of Digital Preservation – A Case Study and likewise a great panel from a team at the University of Illinois on The Curricular Asset Warehouse At The University Of Illinois: A Digital Archive’s Sustainability Case Study.

Angélique Bonamy is Associate Archivist, Sound & Film, at the National Railway Museum, Science Museum Group. She attended the NEDCC Digital Directions 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

In June I attended the NEDCC’s Digital Directions online training conference thanks to a Career Development Fund grant from the DPC. I am a film and sound archivist working in a group of museums with a wide range of collections. My knowledge of digital preservation is very tied to audiovisual and I was interested in better understanding digital preservation for a wider range of digital objects. The Digital Direction is a well-rounded package to explore and understand the different facets of digital preservation with sessions presented by professionals pulling from their day-to-day experience and concrete examples. It ranges from digital preservation principles to access to digital collections, whilst covering management of born digital collections, planning of digitisation, copyright considerations, metadata, storage, preservation of audiovisual collections and digital preservation tools.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is delighted to announce that boxxe, provider of hardware, software and managed IT services, is the newest organization to become part of its Supporter Program.

Having worked within the field of data infrastructure for more than 20 years, boxxe is a creator of flexible technology solutions, with expertise in security and data management, supporting its customers’ data journey through retention, storage, archive and/or preservation.

Robin Wright is Head of Australasia and Asia-Pacific for the Digital Preservation Coalition

In January 2018 the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) embarked on a new strategic plan to prepare the transition to a truly global foundation.

That ambition was elaborated on in June 2019 when the DPC’s mission was formally expanded to include the following goal statement: To enhance our members’ experience and the capacity of the digital preservation community around the world through the provision of a stable and trusted platform for collaboration, owned and run for the benefit of the global digital preservation community, and accountable to them through membership.

In 2023, with a membership of 153 members worldwide, the DPC is well on its way to achieving that ambition – certainly a far cry from its humble beginnings in the UK in 2002 with just 20 members.

The DPC now plays a key role in the global discussion and implementation of digital preservation policy and practice around the world and has become a global community, working together to bring about a sustainable future for our digital assets.

The DPC’s activities have certainly flourished in Australasia and Asia-Pacific in the last 5 years, and in fact, last month we celebrated our 20^th member in the region! In Australasia and Asia-Pacific alone, we now have the same number of members the DPC originally started out with in 2002.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) welcomes Simon P. Wilson Archives Consultant to its Supporter Program.

Simon Wilson will be well known to the DPC community, having worked as Archivist at the University of Hull where he managed the University archives team based at the Hull History Centre. With more than 25 years of experience working across the Higher Education, local government and museum sectors, Simon focuses on the effective use of ICT including digitisation, collections management systems, websites and online catalogues, content management systems and digital preservation.