Blog

Ali Hayes-Brady is Digital Archivist at Records and Archives Services, Monash University

A little over a year ago, when the world began to shut down, the DPC Australian and Asia-Pacific Office had its launch party. It was the last real “event” I attended in person for almost an entire year and it was wonderful. When asked to write a blog for DPC from Monash University’s perspective I thought it would be a nice time to reflect on the year that was – both joining this wonderful community and what we’re hoping to do in the future.

This blog was written by Frederick Alexander (Archivist, Digitisation) and Iram Safdar (Digital Archivist), from Historic Environment Scotland

What do a Dutch shipwreck and file format migration all have in common? These topics might seem dissimilar, but they were both a part of a four-year project in Historic Environment Scotland’s Archive.

In 2018 Historic Environment Scotland Archives launched a digital project with the goal of making 750,000 new digital records available for public access through the Canmore website. This project has generated digital records through digitising our physical collections, as well as cataloguing our externally deposited born-digital records. Additionally, this project has improved organisational knowledge of digital preservation through advocacy, research, and cross-departmental collaboration. 

Adriana Kolar, Ph.D., Archives Management Senior Analyst and Gudrun Beger, Ph.D, Archives Management Senior Analyst are both members of the ‘Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives (LONTAD) Project’.

Information Technology has taken a quantum leap since 1938, when Dr. Pieter Sevensma, Director of the League of Nations Library, ordered Photostat machines for the new premises of the organization, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Photostat machines were devices that made photographic copies of manuscripts, maps and documents. At the time, this system was not only state-of-the-art for making facsimiles but also for storing information on a medium other than paper, i.e., on film rolls.

Gareth Cole is Research Data Manager at Loughborough University. 

I feel I can pretty confidently say the answer is no. But, things may be changing.

As with many universities worldwide, at Loughborough we are working with our academic community to increasingly make their research data publicly available. This is not without its challenges. Some researchers deposit data because they want to make it openly available, some deposit because they are under a funder or publisher obligation, and some don’t deposit! The range of motivations means that a one size fits all approach isn’t appropriate. However, we have to balance this with our limited staffing resource as there is only so much we can do.

Tim Evans is Deputy Director at the Archaeology Data Service.

As I would imagine is the case with the vast majority of people, it's been an unusual year at the Archaeology Data Service. Since moving into lockdown 12 months ago most members of staff have been working remotely, connected only by the ubiquitous Zoom meetings. With Spring in the air, and things  just showing signs of returning to normal here in the UK it's inevitably a time for reflection.

A year ago today the DPC team gathered online and took the decision to close our offices and work from home. We've been working from home ever since. Let me be more precise: the phrase we used was 'at home in a time of emergency doing whatever work was practicable'. That's an important difference and underlines the point which will follow.

Angeline Takawira-Magaya is a Digital Archivist at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.

Trustworthiness is a goal for every digital repository and organizations are increasingly interested in demonstrating it by obtaining certification as a trustworthy digital repository (TDR). However, pursuing certification requires a significant investment of time and effort so it must be a well-considered decision. The anticipated benefits for the organization and its stakeholders must be articulated clearly, and weighed against the likely costs involved, to determine whether the TDR certification is essential, desirable or just “nice to have”.

Last December, the DPC completed a study on EOSC, FAIR, and digital preservation, ‘FAIR Forever? Long Term Data Preservation Roles and Responsibilities’, commissioned by the EOSC Sustainability Working Group and funded by the EOSC Secretariat Project in 2020. In this blog post, I will share some of our key findings and recommendations from the study with two special announcements!

Gareth Knight is Research Data Manager in the Library & Archives Service at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Health research often involves the collection and processing of data from human participants. This data often must be made available to others for the purpose of validation and further development, which makes it essential that it remains usable over time. In this blog post, I will outline some of the steps that may be taken to curate quantitative data held in STATA format.

This topic has previously been explored in a fantastic DPC blog post by Jenny O'Neill in 2017 (https://www.dpconline.org/blog/quanititative-file-formats-for-preservation), however, I will be putting an institutional spin on the topic.

Health context

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university that specialises in the field of public health and tropical medicine. Between 2012-2015, it undertook a Wellcome Trust project to enhance data management practice among researchers. The strong focus upon health research and relatively small size of the institution made it possible to provide researcher support that would not be feasible at a larger scale. As a result, the Library & Archives Service was able to work closely with research projects to help them to address their data preservation and sharing requirements.

Paul Young is Digital Preservation Specialist/Researcher at The National Archives UK

The Challenge

The National Archives has recently been looking at the issue of transferring material from departments with Google Workspace Environments (previously GSuite). The rise in cloud document management has brought new challenges which require changes to existing processes and methods. 

One of the biggest issues is dealing with the Google native cloud formats produced by the suite of collaborative Google tools, such as docs, slides and sheets. These require different methods of handling, as they exist as data that is rendered within the browser, rather than as distinct files. The original format cannot be exported and rendered as you would a Word Document or PDF file.