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Mzodidi Tutuka is Principal Library Assistant, Digital Preservation, at University at Cape Town Library. He attended the No Time To Wait 7 conference with support from a travel grant from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

Recently, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has afforded me the invaluable opportunity to attend a remarkable NTTW7 conference held in the captivating city of Prague. The event was a convergence of minds, a gathering of experts, scholars, and enthusiasts alike, all fervently dedicated to unravelling the complexities of safeguarding our digital heritage. Over the course of three days (8-10 November 2023) immersed in riveting discussions, illuminating presentations, and networking, I gleaned profound insights that underscored the critical importance of working and preserving our digital legacy for future generations.

Graham Purnell is Digital Preservation Assistant at the National Library of Scotland.

As part of a practical exercise to investigate preservation of modern digital objects at the National Library of Scotland (NLS), Graeme Hawley, our Head of General Collections, drew up a short list of items for investigation and possible addition to the Library’s collections.  This list partly emerged out of discussions with partner Legal Deposit Libraries, including the British Library. A small team from across NLS was assembled to investigate best methods and discover technical and legal barriers. The Bytesize Collection Group was born.

Late last year I was lucky enough to attend and give a paper at NDF Whanake\Evolve 2023 at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 20 – 23 November 2023. NDF is a future and technology conference for the Aotearoa cultural sector. It brings together participants from the cultural sector across the Asia-Pacific region to explore how to tackle global challenges including climate change, inequality, and injustice.

The DPC is not alone in recognizing and responding to the pain and distress of civilians caught in the violent conflict in Gaza, both Israeli and Palestinian. We have watched with compassion and horror the growing humanitarian crises and the many personal tragedies which have unfolded. We condemn atrocities whoever has committed them, and we are moved by scenes of unimaginable suffering to call for a complete cessation of violence.

The DPC's mandate – a sustainable future for our digital assets – compels us to have a particular concern to ensure the preservation of the digital cultural and scientific record. We are therefore profoundly distressed by reports of the destruction of the Central Archives of Gaza, of the main public library of Gaza, of the displacement of staff who manage and preserve the cultural and scientific heritage of the region, and of the suffering inflicted on them and their families.

Drawing on our own mandate, we add our voice to those of ICA, IFLA, UNESCO, ICOM and others to reiterate to all parties the terms of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols. These documents make plain that cultural heritage, including the digital record, is irreplaceable. Therefore the spaces and institutions associated with cultural property must not become a theatre of war, and the professionals who safeguard it must be afforded the full protection of international law.

Knowing also that peace, justice and truth are aligned, we celebrate those who create and preserve the digital record of our turbulent times. Insofar as it is in our power, we extend to them our full professional support and recognition.

At the end of January 2023 the DPC contacted its Members to find out who would be interested in joining a new DPC Working Group for Museums and Galleries. We had a lot of interest - in fact even from Members who we weren’t aware were looking after collections of this nature. The group now has members from Australia, USA, UK and the Netherlands.

We held our first meeting in March 2023 and have met for an hour every other month since. Though we only advertise our meetings to those who are signed up for the group, we are keen that learnings from our discussions are more broadly shared with the wider digital preservation community. This blog post intends to do just that by summarizing the activities of our first year.

Happy New Year DPC Members! We're looking forward to another packed 12 months of learning and sharing digital preservation, so here's how to have your say and connect with other members this year:

It’s been just over a year since Elon Musk took over control of X (formerly Twitter), and the major changes that he has made to this popular social media platform have been hard to miss – especially for any organization hoping to archive and preserve posts. So for the last DP Clinic of 2023, a one-hour focussed discussion forum that is open to all, we thought it might be interesting to revisit the whole topic by exploring the question: “What are we going to do about Social Media?”

Back in 2019 the DPC released a new maturity model for digital preservation as part of a project we were working on with the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. We called it our Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) and we have been really pleased to see how widely used it has been across the digital preservation community. We reviewed RAM in 2021 and moved it to version 2 (read about what changed in RAM version 2 here). After another few years we think it is due for revision again.

Amy Ibbotson is Collection Management Archivist (Digital), Digital Archive Team, at Queensland State Archives. She attended the NEDCC Digital Directions 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

Thanks to the DPC Career Development Fund I was able to attend the NEDCC online Digital Directions Conference. While the conference was not time-zone friendly for those of us residing ‘Down Under’ (2am wake up thank you very much!), the early starts soon proved to be worth the effort.

Taryn Ellis is Digital Preservation Technical Analyst at State Library of South Australia, a member of National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA). She attended the iPRES 2023 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.

As a relative newcomer to the field of digital preservation (so much to learn, so much to do!) I was keen to attend the iPRES 2023 Panel, “Policies, Risks and Strategies: A File Format Debate” chaired by Sam Alloing from the National Library of the Netherlands (KBNL).