Blog

Lena Böse is a student at University College Dublin 

At last month’s DPC Unconference in Dublin, participants voted to have one of the spontaneous DPC member-led sessions focus on advocacy. When an Unconference participant shared their experience of institutional data loss and neglect, the group for this session came together as a supportive sounding board: They shared their own experiences openly and offered suggestions on how to overcome adversity in institutions and organizations to get the resources, time, and recognition required to successfully preserve digital material.

Yesterday afternoon we ran session 2 of ‘Let’s talk about FRED’. Read all about session 1 in my previous blog post here. Session 2 was a Members-only ‘show and tell’ about FRED, and we were lucky to be able to hear case studies from three Members on how they are using their FRED forensics workstations.

In June 2024 I was invited to give an opening keynote on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Preservation to a workshop of around 200 librarians organized by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), sponsored by the IFLA Information Technology Section, the IFLA IT Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence and IFLA Preservation and Conservation Section.  The workshop had the theme ‘AI and the future of digital preservation’ and my own presentation was followed by a series of case studies:

This morning the DPC hosted session one of  ‘Let’s talk about FRED: Experiences with the FRED Forensic Workstation’

As noted in the event preamble, this event was born on the back of a conversation amongst DPC Members on the DPC mailing list. Someone had asked a question about how other organizations use the FRED Forensics Workstation as they were thinking of trying to make the case to get one for their own digital preservation activities. The friendly and helpful replies included information about FRED use at a variety of organizations along with a call to have a FRED ‘show and tell’ session for Members to discuss this further. As the DPC is guided and driven by our members, it seemed only right to try and provide this opportunity, and with generous offers to speak, we quickly had a full programme.

Every year, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) invites member organisations from around the world to gather together for the DPC Unconference, where professionals working in the digital preservation sector get to set the agenda and lead sessions on topics related to their area of work. This event is for DPC Members only, and is designed to privilege operational staff working directly on digital preservation. This in-person networking event provides a fantastic opportunity for the digital preservation community to share expertise and experiences and to work together to bring about a sustainable future for our shared digital cultural heritage.

Gali Halevi is Collection Director at CLOCKSS

This blog post was originally published on the CLOCKSS website 

In the dynamic world of academic publishing, maintaining the integrity of research is absolutely crucial. These journals bear the weighty responsibility of upholding the principles of research integrity and appropriate scholarly conduct.

However, in recent times, a troubling trend has emerged. Predatory journals and paper mills have begun to proliferate, casting a shadow over the sanctity of academic research. Alongside this surge, there has been a disconcerting increase in the number of retracted articles, revealing cracks in the foundation of research integrity.

Niamh Murphy is Digital Preservation Librarian at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin

Attending the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Unconference last week, alongside our Digital Library Manager, Audrey Drohan, was an incredibly fulfilling experience. I am filled with immense gratitude and pride as I reflect on the event. Gratitude for being part of such a wonderful and inspiring community, and pride in the meaningful work that we all do.

The first prototype service from the Registries of Good Practice Project is now available, here: https://www.digipres.org/publications/

This first experiment has focussed on bringing together the proceedings of the iPRES Conference series. We're hoping this will make it much easier to find and build on the digital preservation research and practice from the twenty-year history of iPRES.

Paul Stokes is Subject Matter Expert (Digital Preservation) at Jisc

Buying a digital preservation system has never been a quick process. They’re expensive (and definitely NOT an unconsidered, impulse buy) which almost inevitably means a full public procurement exercise. Lead times from the initial consideration (”we need to do something about keeping our digital stuff usable”) to the final deployment of a shiny, new system can be of the order of years. A not inconsiderable part of that lead time can be used up in the procurement process; deciding what bells and whistles are actually needed, who needs them, why they’re needed, who can cater to those needs and who or what provides the MEAT (most economically advantageous tender).

We're pleased to announce the release of version 3 of the Digital Preservation Coalition's maturity modelling tool: the Rapid Assessment Model, otherwise known as DPC RAM.

We have been collating feedback from you all since our last RAM revision in 2021, and this has been incredibly useful for alerting us to potential revisions and additions - so thanks very much to everyone who contributed. We've also had a review and expansion of what might broadly be termed ethical issues. But don't panic, we haven't made any drastic changes to the model - we certainly don't want to compromise the potential for analysing maturity over time. Hopefully we have managed to sharpen the existing text, remove ambiguity and ensure RAM encapsulates the latest in digital preservation good practice whilst keeping it quick and easy to use.