Blog

This blog has been written by Carey Garvie, Senior Digital Preservation Specialist, Library Systems & Digital Preservation and Susannah Bourke, Digital Archivist, Description Original Materials at State Library Victoria

This year’s theme for World Digital Preservation Day - Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort feels extremely pertinent to our experience over the last year. In December 2022, State Library Victoria appointed two new Digital Preservation positions. Together these roles have been focused on setting up procedures and equipment for processing incoming and legacy digital acquisitions. One of the first steps has been to set up a working group of staff from across the acquisitions, description and library systems teams who process unpublished digital materials for the collection. This group has been working together to map out current workflows, identify opportunities for improvement and document procedures. While this was occurring a search was also underway for a location to set up the digital preservation equipment.

Fran Horner is an archivist at the University of Sheffield Special Collections, Heritage and Archives (SCHA)

My name is Fran and I am a new Archivist (or ‘musician’) at the University of Sheffield Special Collections, Heritage and Archives (my ‘orchestra’). Digital preservation (the ‘symphony’) falls under my remit in this new role.

It has been a really interesting experience over the last five months getting to grips with my new role and exploring this ‘orchestra’s’ ‘symphony’. I began by meeting my fellow musicians who manage digital archives and collections (or ‘notations’) which form the basis of the ‘symphony’, such as the Special Collections and Archives Managers, a fellow Archivist, the Library Systems team and the Digital Preservation Manager, Bryony Hooper, to name a few.

Helen Dafter is Archivist at The Postal Museum in the UK

The Postal Museum recently reached a significant step in its digital preservation journey, with the purchase of Preservica. I am celebrating this achievement, and thinking about what we need to do next to get it fully up and running. We wouldn’t have been able to reach this stage without the support and cooperation of many others along the way.

This blog was written by Claire Newing, Web Archivist at The National Archives (UK), Patricia Falcão, Time-Based Media Conservator at Tate, Sarah Haylett, Archives and Records Management Researcher at Tate and Jane Kennedy, Records Manager at Tate

In 2023 - and for the first time in either of our histories of collaborative practice - Tate approached The National Archives about supplying the first in-house captured microsite to the UK Government Web Archive. This was a near reversal of the usual process, by which the TNA regularly captures Tate’s website as part of their collecting remit to “archive central government information published on the web”.

Eve Wright is a Digital Archivist at National Records of Scotland

At National Records of Scotland, our current approach to digital preservation is to look outwards. We take small incremental steps to improve our preservation activities gradually, so we are continually dependent upon (and grateful to!) to our colleagues, who make open source digital preservation options available.

One challenge we have recently faced was how we could implement a regular process of integrity checking without any system automation. Our Digital Repository is file system based so there would need to be some kind of tool to look through digital objects and compare checksums against what we produced during ingest.

Barbara Sierman is a Digital Preservation Consultant and a DPC Fellow

Imagine digital preservation as a concerted effort and all digital preservationists worldwide as an orchestra playing one big symphony about digital preservation. This is the theme of the WDPD2023, but is it true? I have my doubts, as there is no conductor for the orchestra and no “Great Plan”, but OK, there are sure some good examples of concerted efforts in dedicated projects.

Lieve Baetens is Student Cultural Heritage/Former intern selection and preservation immersive media at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Heritage. She interned at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision where she researched strategies for the selection and preservation of immersive media.

During my internship at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision I conducted the research titled “Collaboratively Moving Forward: Exploring Strategies for the Selection and Preservation of Immersive Media in Cultural Heritage Institutions”.^[1] As the name suggests, the research emphasizes the importance of institutional collaboration for selecting and preserving immersive works.

As part of the research, I interviewed fourteen experts in the field from ten institutions in total. I was very pleasantly surprised about how willing everyone was to contribute to the research. From listening to the interviews with these experts on one of my favorite podcasts called “Art & Obsolescence” hosted by Cass Fino-Radin, to being able to meet these experts and talk with them about immersive media made me very happy. As a young professional it was wonderful to experience how welcoming the digital preservation community is. It made me realize that digital preservation truly is a concerted effort.

Corinne Frappart is Digital Archivist at the Publications Office of the EU

Introduction

As we recently celebrated World Digital Preservation Day (WDPD) in 2023, we find ourselves standing at the crossroads of history in the field of digital preservation, tasked with the challenge of safeguarding the ever-increasing number of digital artifacts that define our past, inform our present, and shape our future.

The theme for this year's WDPD, "Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort," underscored the collaborative nature of the digital preservation community's mission. One of the most emblematic examples of this collaboration is the development of open-source software. In this blog post, I will delve into the specific case of the long-term preservation open-source software RODA, and the impact of its use by public administrations leading to improvements that benefit the digital preservation community at large.

Daniel Greenberg is Director of Product Management at Ex Libris, part of Clarivate

The challenges of digital preservation are constantly evolving. New file formats emerge, old ones become obsolete, and the quest to ensure the longevity of digital assets never ceases.

In this changing landscape, one principle remains constant at Ex Libris, part of Clarivate: the power of community-led development. This credo is more than just a philosophy; it's the core of our digital preservation efforts. For us, working with the community is the only way to guarantee a real-life, use-case-oriented system.

Emily Clarke is Digitisation Lead at Monash University Library. She attended the iPRES 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

As a first-time attendee to iPRES, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I don’t have a background in the technical aspects of digital preservation. I am not a digital preservationist. What was waiting for me in Champaign, Illinois? My concerns that I would be overwhelmed by technical jargon, foreign concepts, and subtle specificity were not to be met. In this blog, I reflect on some of what I learned from the iPRES 2023 conference, particularly how it connects to this year’s WDPD theme of ‘A Concerted Effort’: The importance of a holistic view of digital preservation, and what are we actually doing it for?