Sean Macmillan is Digital Collections Manager at King's College London.
For anyone new to the world of digital preservation, or anyone not new to digital preservation but lives in a cave on Mars, iPRES is the world’s premier digital preservation conference.
From the 16th to 20th of September, people from all pockets of the globe arrived in the charming and poetic city of Ghent, with its winding canals, to attend this mammoth of a conference.
In many ways the canals of Ghent are a great analogy for Digital Preservation! The water is always flowing and changing, and yet the canals themselves are centuries old having endured for centuries. We have a similar challenge to ensure that the various streams of dynamic bits and tech remain for the future.
When Preservation Meets Playfulness
My main area of interest was the games rooms, which I had the pleasure of reviewing and organising. Running two 1.5-hour sessions packed to the rafters with 20-25 attendees, I had the bittersweet task of not being able to accommodate all who attended.
© iPRES
The range of games on offer included:
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Digital Preservation Storage Criteria Game: which prompts players to think about the Criteria (preservation storage considerations for digital material), consider how they are important in different contexts, and practice explaining why they’re important in their context. Special thanks to: Jane Mandelbaum; Nancy McGovern (Global Archivist LLC); Sibyl Schaefer (University of California, San Diego); Cynthia Wu (National Library of New Zealand); Eld Zierau (Royal Danish Library)
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Open Science Against Humanity and Open <3 Science Card Games: which lowers the abstract nature of the theoretical nature of digital preservation using a fun card game. Special thanks to: E Karvovskaya (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Elisa Rodenburg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Stephanie van de Sandt (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
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Preservation Python: which is a snake-type game where the player controls a continually shrinking python, a metaphor for obsolescence and data loss. The python must ingest, pun intended, content and preservation information while avoiding elements that accelerate data loss. Special thanks to Jonathan Isip.
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File Format Frenzy: is an interactive, choose your own adventure game designed to teach players file format analysis and how to identify various file format. Special thanks to Francesca Mackenzie.
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Dungeons & Documents: a two to four player competitive board game that is loosely inspired by popular games like The Settlers of CATAN and Snakes and Ladders. Special thanks to Lena Boese; Ellen Fanning; Feargal Keenan.
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Digital Preservation for 5 Year Olds: Here the creators have asked Chat GPT-4 to explain the concepts as if to a 5-year-old. Special thanks to: Jonathan Isip and Mackenzie.
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Digital Detective Game: which is based on the framework of the popular murder mystery game Clue (also known as Cluedo outside the United States). Special thanks to Jeanne Kramer-Smyth.
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The Long-Term Preservation of Research Data Challenge: which is an immersive game where a data curator follows a working routine in a library and has a limited amount of time and storage available for research data whithin the long-term archive. Special thanks to Elena Hamidy and Natascha Schumann.
© iPRES
DPC Related events
I also had the absolute pleasure to attend a few events involving well-known friends from the DPC.
On the first day we had the fancy DPC Award Ceremony, which showcased projects making waves in digital preservation, like the Collaborative Models of Care for Australian First Nations digital heritage. Other winners can be seen here: https://www.dpconline.org/events/digital-preservation-awards
Sharon McMeekin also led a session on the creation of a Skills Resource for digital preservation specialists. This wonderful session got us all brainstorming and discussing what resources we know of. It was a wonderful way to learn more about the community, and what is going on. Their was also a really powerful (and for me personally therapeutic) discussion around wellbeing and mental health in the DPC community, that was prompted by the DPC survey on mental health (see: https://www.dpconline.org/news/dpc-launches-new-survey-on-mental-health-and-wellbeing-in-the-digital-preservation-community)
What else happened?
iPRES-24 was much like a buffet, where the range of options on offer are much greater than any appetite to be satisfied. Highlights included:
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A workshop on digitizing and preserving our nostalgic analogue AV gems. With experts from FIAT/IFTA in attendance, I learned that the key to long-term preservation includes continuous migration of formats.
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A talk on creating a digital asset register, and how crucial it is for keeping track of resources. It’s like a treasure map for your digital collections, and something I have experience with myself.
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The session on the Brocade tool opened my eyes to a powerful archival management system. While it might have its roots in Dutch-speaking libraries, the potential to streamline metadata management is massive!
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A fantastic workshop about social media preservation using tools and technologies that are free to all.
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A fantastic paper about digitising AV content for long-term preservation.
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Discussions surrounding e-books and digital ownership brought urgent considerations for what we can do if we digitize our collections.
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A fantastic talk about AI models and what they offer to digital preservation!
Social Program
If the main iPRES-24 conference was like a buffet, then the awards and social events were akin to a glorious dessert! The social dinners organised were a great way to get to know people, and bond more with other attendees. We had the pleasure of experiencing a really entertaining comedy band called Die Verdammte Spielerei who serenaded us with the most charming jazz, all while casually plodding around the venue, circling some tables, in their white vests!
The People who delivered iPRES
We also need to talk about the people who made iPRES-24 possible. For iPRES-24 four organizations acted as a core consortium: Het Facilitair Bedrijf (Digital Archive Flanders); Ghent University; VRT the public broadcaster of the Flemish Community in Belgium; and Meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives.
The ratio of what they provided to the amount of work that went into the organization is likely comparable to that of a great composer like Mozart or Bach. In the same way that a 5-minute symphony may take months to perfect, one great week was the result of months of planning and design.
The communications, marketing, and engagement was also superb, as organisers on hand responded to a range of questions (online and in-person), ranging from “where are the toilets?” to “where can I learn about emulation strategies?”. This does not happen by accident and is a reflection of a superb effort from all who delivered iPRES-24.
Until next year, keep preserving!