I last blogged about the DPC’s Museums and Galleries Special Interest Group in January 2024. Another year of networking and collaboration has flown by and I wanted to share with you an update about what we have been up to.
Digital preservation is digital preservation regardless of the type of organization you work in, but specific sectors can have particular challenges relating to the preservation of digital content. Museums and galleries are one such sector, and as increasing numbers of organizations of this type join the DPC, we want to ensure they have a forum to share experiences and discuss topics of interest to them. The Museums and Galleries Special Interest Group has been running for two years now and is designed to do just this.
Here is a summary of our activities over the last year, as well as our plans for 2025.
March 2024
In this meeting we invited a couple of members to present elements of their digital preservation work.
First up was a presentation from Helen Dafter from The Postal Museum who shared some of their ongoing work to implement Preservica as their digital preservation system, with a particular emphasis into file formats and file migration plans. This was a really helpful account which built on some of the themes in a previous blog post from Helen.
This was followed by a presentation from Matti Watton from the V&A who gave a really helpful case study on advocacy for digital preservation within a museum context. He discussed the move away from thinking purely in analogue and the importance of engaging with many different stakeholders within the organization. A working group for digital preservation has been key to moving forward and getting buy-in for a new digital preservation manager role within the organization.
May 2024
Continuing on from the last meeting, we had 2 further presentations from group members about aspects of their digital preservation work. First Teresa Soleau from Getty Digital talked about a pilot to preserve time based media artworks. Using Rosetta to preserve the bits and TMS to store the metadata and documentation, they focused on two artwork examples. This was a really nice example of an iterative approach to digital preservation. They recognised that they weren’t aiming for gold star level but wanted to start taking steps and see how this would evolve.
Alex Bancroft (also from Getty Digital) followed on with a presentation about a digital preservation survey that they had carried out to understand digital and analogue holdings across the museum and set preservation priorities going forward. The methodologies involved included a survey, in person interviews and a workshop as well as a documentation review. As a result of this work they have come up with a set of practical and achievable next steps but there are other key benefits that have been realised. She noted in particular the importance of the relationship building element of this work and the buy-in from colleagues that has happened as a result.
July 2024
In this meeting we had focus on skills with a presentation on DPC’s Competency Audit Toolkit (CAT) with Sharon McMeekin from the DPC and a case study on using the tool from Helen Dafter of the Postal Museum. Sharon talked through the Competency Audit Toolkit, a tool that can be used to understand digital preservation skills of an individual or across an organization.
Helen Dafter talked us through how the Postal Museum had used DPC CAT alongside DPC RAM (our Rapid Assessment Model), carrying out a first assessment in 2023 and a follow up in 2024. She shared some of her findings and observations, and discussed how their recent implementation of a digital preservation system had influenced internal priorities and thinking around skills. Discussion followed on her future plans to use both RAM and CAT again, and on how to get buy-in from colleagues for exercises like this.
September 2024
In September’s meeting we heard from Meg Rinn and Jessica Quagliaroli from the Yale Centre for British Art. They talked about a project to integrate archival finding aids and digitized material into their online museum collections catalogue. They made some interesting observations about the differing metadata standards and platforms they work with as well as on user expectations. Within museum collections there is an expectation that every object should be individually described, and this doesn’t align with archival cataloguing practices where there is a hierarchy of description. Meg described how this highly collaborative and supportive project had allowed museum colleagues to get more of a sense of how archives work and how to manage user expectations around discovery and access.
We also took a look at some refreshed benchmarking data from DPC RAM. This was a repeat of an exercise we did the previous year, looking at summary results from group members and checking in on how DPC Members working in this sector compare with the wider DPC membership. The statistics this year appeared to show that group members have made some progress in closing the gap between their current and target levels.
It was great to be able to announce the publication of a new Technology Watch Guidance Note on Preserving Digital Art that had been written by Patrícia Falcão. This group had provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this text and were pleased to see the final version released to the wider world.
November 2024
In our November meeting we had a discussion about how members facilitate access to digital content. We used the following questions as prompts to get the group talking and sharing their own experiences:
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How do you provide access to digital content currently?
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Have you got plans to improve/enhance digital access in the future?
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What do you find to be the main barriers for providing access to digital content?
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What tools do you use that help you provide access to digital content?
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Do you have any tips for others in approaching this challenge?
There were several members with some interesting plans in progress in this area and it was agreed that we should revisit this topic at a later date so we can hear more.
January 2025
The start of a new year provided an opportunity to have a discussion about what we had all achieved over the course of 2024 and what priorities were for the coming year. This produced some lively discussion and interesting insights. Emerging from this is a plan for our forthcoming meetings, which is as follows….
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March: Our next meeting is coming up soon and we will be focusing on the topic of Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS) and their role in digital preservation.
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May: In this meeting we plan to focus on the Bit List of Digitally Endangered Species and will also touch on cybersecurity.
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July: By popular demand, this session will be a ‘show and tell’ about the tools we use to help us do digital preservation tasks.
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September: This seemed like a good time to revisit the topic of access to digital content - it will be interesting to hear updates on progress made since our last chat about this.
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November: Meeting topic to be confirmed…thoughts and feedback welcome!
I’ll end with some words from group members on what they most value about this group:
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“Networking with different museums, and being able to see what others are doing”
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“Time for open discussion about shared challenges and solutions”
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“Open discussion space and opportunity to build connections.”
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“Honestly, it's just great to hear from other museums what they are doing. It's been really useful to speak with others in the museum setting.”
Thanks to all group members for the knowledge exchange, the energy and the interesting chats!
Do get in touch if you are a DPC Member, involved in digital preservation activities in a Museum or Gallery setting, and you would like to join this working group…or indeed if you are not (yet) a DPC Member and you would like to find out how to get involved. We would love to hear from you and grow this supportive international community!