Collaboration forms a central role in many of the activities of the DPC and is one of the core objectives in our current Strategic Plan. We work to facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and development between the members of the Coalition and also the wider world.

There are compelling reasons and, in some cases, political pressure, to engage in greater collaboration within and between organisations in order effectively to confront and overcome the challenges of digital preservation. The range of skills required to do this demands flexibility within organisational structures to facilitate working in multi-disciplinary teams. There is a significant overlap in the digital preservation issues being faced by all organisations and across all sectors so it makes sense to pool expertise and experience. Communication with key stakeholders, using terms and language understood by them (see Advocacy) will play a major part in building and maintaining collaborations.

Read more about collaboration and how to get involved, in the Digital Preservation Handbook.

DPC Projects

Where our members will derive a direct benefit, the DPC contributes to project consortia with other specialist organisations from across the world in order to further research and insight into the field of digital preservation.

Find out more about our projects.

Partnerships and Alliances

Allied Organisations are organisations who collaborate with the Coalition on specific activities and goals and participate by invitation in selected activities. They can include individual commercial organisations who work with the Coalition to promote a dialogue with industry on digital preservation issues, and developing solutions and standards, or other national and international organisations.

Partnership with an allied organisation may be for a finite period of time and/or for specific activities as agreed between the Coalition and the allied organisation. Where appropriate it may be open-ended and termination of partnership would be by six months' written notice on either side. Allied organisations may be expected to contribute agreed levels of funding and/or staff resources for shared activities and/or access to Coalition events or resources. Depending on the nature of the partnership, this may involve the payment of a subscription. The level of subscription, where applicable, will be determined by the Board of Directors.

Allied Individuals are individuals with specific expertise and experience invited by the Coalition to contribute to the Advisory Council and/or other selected activities. Appointment as an allied individual is for a period of 12 months and is renewed automatically annually unless written notice is given on either side.

Meet our Allied Organisations.

Working Groups

From time to time the we bring small groups together to work on specific issues shared between members, and the DPC is frequently invited to contribute to working parties organised by other groups. Details of these working parties and task forces are published here.

• Web Archiving and Preservation Task Force (DPC-WAPTF)
• Public Records Act (Scotland) Implementation Group
• Capacity Enhancement and Peer Review Task Force (DPC-CERT)
• Editorial Board for the DPC Technology Watch Reports
• Career Development and Training Task Force (DPC-CDT)
• Bedern Group - Digital Preservation and the Historic Environment (Bedern Group) (login required)

Find out more

Connecting the Bits

Connecting the Bits is a day-long networking and planning event designed to help members keep in touch with each other and with the state of the art in digital preservation. It's a chance for the members of our coalition to set the agenda for the DPC's work for the coming year. The event is an "unconference style" day of knowledge exchange on digital preservation challenges. The unconference format is like a conference except there is no pre-determined theme or programme: the agenda is generated by participants in the morning, then delivered in the afternoon. This format privileges debate and discussion, and it ensures that anyone with a burning issue or success story has a chance to share it.

The next Connecting the Bits will be held in the last week of June 2017. Watch this space for more information...

A key role for the DPC is to empower and develop our members’ workforces. Our members operate in a competitive and dynamic knowledge environment where roles and responsibilities of staff are constantly changing. It is crucial, therefore, that staff remain informed of, trained in and confident with the new developments and tools which are released and made available. This is particularly important when existing staff are retrained to embrace a new skills set.

The DPC addresses this issue by facilitating training and support activities and creating practitioner-focused material and events:

The Digital Preservation Handbook

The Digital Preservation Handbook identifies good practice in creating, managing and preserving digital materials and suggests ways in which institutions can begin to address their digital preservation challenge. Full of helpful material, tips and videos, the Handbook provides a range of practical tools to help get started in Digital Preservation.

Read the Digital Preservation Handbook

Novice to Know-How: Online Digital Preservation Training

Part of The National Archives’ new digital capacity building strategy, ‘Plugged In, Powered Up,’ the Novice to Know-How learning pathway aims to provide beginners with the skills required to develop and implement simple digital preservation workflows within their organisation.

It starts with a broad introduction to digital preservation issues and describes the measures we can take to address these. It then delves into potential workflows in more detail, examining the issues to consider, steps to take, and technological solutions that can deployed. An emphasis is placed on free, easy-to-use solutions, and includes detailed demos of how to use the key tool, DROID. Course content is provided as mix of video, text, and quizzes.

Register for online digital preservation training

The DPC Career Development Fund

The DPC Career Development Fund provides funding for members to undertake training and personal development opportunities in two ways: through regular Advertised Calls for grants on the DPC News page, and members are also welcome to apply for grants for Member Self-Identified Opportunities they believe will help build digital preservation capacity within their organization. The DPC also invites training providers to discuss the possibility and appropriateness of offering Career Development Fund grants for such opportunities by contacting the Training & Grants Manager.

Visit the DPC Career Development Fund page to find and apply for grants

Getting Started and Making Progress in Digital Preservation

The DPC offers two day-long training courses for those looking to start addressing their digital preservation challenges. Both courses are aimed at an introductory level and aim to provide delegates with practical advice, skills and solutions that they will be able to implement at their own organisation.

'Getting Started with Digital Preservation' introduces delegates to common digital preservation concepts and issues before walking them through the first steps they can take to manage their digital assets. This includes bit-level preservation, assessing their digital preservation maturity, undertaking a risk management exercise and creating a digital asset register.

'Making Progress with Digital Preservation' provides delegates with guidance on the 'next steps' in developing their digital preservation capability. Presentations and exercises will cover building a business case, drafting a digital preservation policy, developing a competent digital preservation workforce and making practical preservation decisions.

Visit the DPC Events page to find and register for upcoming courses

Click to view resources from Getting Started and Making Progress events

Member Briefing Days and Invitational Events 

DPC events provide more detailed analysis of specific topics relevant to digital preservation, often associated with Technology Watch Reports.

Click to browse resources and materials from all past events. 

External Training Opportunities

A wide range of digital preservation training and development opportunities are offered by agencies and institutions around the world. A selection of courses offered by DPC members includes

• Aberystwyth University
• Kings College London
• University College Dublin
• University of Glasgow
• University of Salford
• University of Sheffield

Use this to find the assistance you need to do digital preservation, from reference materials to asking the question of others

There are an almost endless number of challenges in the digital preservation field. Whether it's in depth experience with a particular file format, getting to grips with emulation, or writing a business case to fund your preservation work, it's unrealistic for a single person to have all the experience and answers needed. Getting support and advice from a subject specialist or simply someone who's been there, not succeeded first time, tried again, and learned the lessons can often make a real difference. That's where the DPC comes in. This is our guide to seeking help with your digital preservation challenges.

What makes a good digital preservation question?

Digital Preservation is a complex topic at the centre of a whole range of different issues. A solution to a particular problem is often a compromise between technological, resourcing and organisational factors. We often joke amongst the DPC Team that the answer to every digipres question is "it depends". The more serious point behind this observation is that there is usually no one answer that suits all. Which file format, which tool, what process, who should be involved, which issue is the priority...? All these questions depend on the context. What is being preserved, who created it, who is it being preserved for, what is the legal context, and many more issues are essential to understand before an appropriate approach can be identified.

If you're asking a digital preservation question, try and provide as much of the relevant context as possible, to allow an answer to be tailored to your specific situation. Much of this organisational and contextual knowledge is often taken for granted by the questioner, but is essential to understand for those giving help.

Digital preservation, as is often noted, is also a moving target. Some digipres questions will address areas where there is established good practice. Others will be at the cutting edge of understanding with perhaps little evidence or experience to inform advice. In these cases it may be necessary to have a broader discussion, perform research or perhaps trial different approaches before guidance can be arrived at. What constitutes a good answer now, may be completely out of date within a short period of time. Having a thorough understanding of *why* a particular approach is recommended, will help to inform future decision making.

What makes a good answer to a digital preservation question?

In this busy and resource constrained world in which we live, the best answer to any question should be a clear, simple and straightforward prescription that can be easily implemented. Or is it? If the context to a question is critical (see above) then perhaps the answer itself could more usefully be about the broader process and the broader understanding behind any specific answers. The response to many DPC member queries is more often than not a dialogue that takes in the wider issues and context and explores different solutions or approaches. A two way discussion (or ideally, a multi-way discussion with other members as well) can help take a member towards a solution that's appropriate for them, and give them the understanding to maintain and develop that solution over time as requirements and challenges change. It's therefore helpful to manage expectations, where a simple one sentence question might well not have a simple one sentence answer.

Getting help: Make use of DPC resources

• There is a fabulous wealth of reference material in the DPC Website Knowledge Base. There is a search facility at the top of every page or a browse of the subject tags may be of use.
• We provide detailed guidance on preservation subjects in our Technology Watch publications. Full Technology Watch reports provide in-depth reference information, but there are also short Guidance Notes on specific topics and our Topical Notes series introduces key digital preservation topics in easy to understand 2 page primers.
• The DPC's Digital Preservation Handbook includes a contents page that can also be a handy route for browsing to useful sources of information.
• Engaging across your organisation (and beyond) and building the case for digital preservation is often a challenge. Our Advocacy page provides pointers to help in this area, including our Executive Guide and Business Case Toolkit. The Policy Toolkit and Procurement Toolkit then provide guidance on moving forward from engagement success to digipres implementation.
• The digipres.org site pulls together a whole host of community sourced information about digital preservation and has a handy front page listing all sorts of useful links.

If you don't find the answers you're looking for then please move swiftly onto the next step...

Get direct help from the DPC

Our DPC staff are small in number, but our member expertise is vast! Contact us and we hope to be able to help. If we can't help, we will most likely know someone across the coalition who will! Here are some options:

• Contact one of the DPC staff - a useful first step, or chat with us in our weekly DPConnect.
• Ask a question on the DPC email list (if you're a member and you don't yet have access, please get in touch by email at info (at) dpconline.org). If the question is sensitive in nature, we can anonymously ask DPC members for you.
• Book in some Dedicated Support for Full Members - full DPC members are entitled to up to 5 days of dedicated support per year.

Ask the community

Sometimes it's useful to ask a question in a more public forum, assuming you're happy to share with the wider world. This enables responses to be shared, commented upon by other interested parties, refined, and of course re-used by others in the future. Try the following:

• Digital Preservation Q&A - a question and answer site dedicated specifically to digital preservation
• Digital Curation Google Group - a message board focused on digital preservation with a really active userbase
• Subject specific groups - there are a number of subject specific groups, such as this one focused on PRONOM discussion

Don't forget about the digital-preservation@jiscmail.ac.uk email list. Although it's a moderated list intended for announcements rather than discussion, it can be very useful for raising awareness of your work. See the archives here. The ALA's Digipres list is another alternative with a bit of a focus on the US.