Blog

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.

Helen Dafter is Archivist at The Postal Museum in the UK.

When politicians come to office, they often set out their plan for the first 100 days. I am taking a longer timeframe and reflecting on the first six months (roughly 180 days) of working with a digital preservation system. 

In September 2023, The Postal Museum invested in Preservica. I blogged about the work involved in getting to that stage for World Digital Preservation Day last year (Acquiring a Digital Preservation System - Digital Preservation Coalition (dpconline.org)). This was a significant achievement but as anyone who has gone ahead on this journey will tell you, it is a milestone not a destination. 

The DPC recently held a series of events on the topic of digital forensics (an initial event on the 26th February and a follow up ‘Watch Party’ event suitable for community members in Australasia and Asia Pacific). As suggested by the title, the focus was to ‘investigate good practice’ through the sharing of knowledge, experiences and case studies.

This event was born as a result of the interesting discussions in our very first DPC Reading Club which looked at an article on the topic of digital forensics by Thorsten Ries, alongside a realization that our existing Technology Watch Report on the topic was in need of revision, and that facilitating a community discussion around the subject might be a good way to kick this off. 

Dr. Maureen Pennock is Head of Digital Collection Management at The British Library

Have you ever noticed the range of different ways we talk about risk in digital preservation? We talk – and write – extensively about risks, but the terminology we use to describe them can be quite inconsistent. We often use different terms and different measures to define the same kind of concerns. We talk a lot about trust too, sometimes seemingly confusing it with risk - though they’re not the same thing.

Following on from our earlier announcement, we wanted to go into a bit more detail about the goals of the Registries of Good Practice project, some of the principles that will guide us, and how to get involved.

The Born Digital Cultural Heritage Now #BDCH23 conference https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/bdch-23/ was held at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia from 29 Nov to 1 Dec 2023. It was a forum for researchers, practitioners, artists, historians, cultural theorists, and industry professionals to discuss the challenges of collecting, preserving, and accessing born digital cultural heritage material. Much born digital cultural heritage material such as media art, video games, web content, discussion forum and bulletin board posts, architectural documentation and other digital data created over the last twenty to thirty years is no longer accessible. This is the result of a range of technical and non-technical issues including hardware and software obsolescence, media deterioration, content abandonment, institutional and business decisions, archival practices, legal restrictions, and cultural and audience changes. The #BDCH23 conference focused on how these issues are being addressed in different contexts and the impact this loss on our culture and society.