Issues
Browse the Knowledge Base by a cross section of legal, organisational and technical issues such as File Format Obsolescence, Procurement or Metadata.
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Articles
Digital Preservation Documentation Guide: New DPC resource now available on general release
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has made its newest resource Digital Preservation Documentation: a guide available on general release today, following an exclusive Member preview.
Invitation to join our Python Study Group Launch & Information Session
Are you passionate about coding in Python, teaching others and supporting the digital preservation community? Or would you like to improve your coding skills and learn how to use Python for your digital preservation work?
Notes on the Clear Blue Yonder: Technical Debt and Digital Preservation
Obfuscate and Accumulate Here’s an idea that comes out of a clear blue sky: we don’t talk enough about technical debt in digital preservation. It’s an important concept and one we could be working with. Technical debt is a term used in software development to describe the costs that arise when an easy or cheap solution is adopted over a fully worked out, properly documented, long-term solution. Expedient or cheap solutions which don’t have forwards compatibility make future changes costly if...
Webinar on Immersive Media Preservation with Sound and Vision
As part of the research program of Sound & Vision on Immersive Media, Lieve Baetens has conducted research placement on strategies for the selection and preservation of Immersive Media in Cultural Heritage Institutions. You are all invited to join the free webinar organized by Sound & Vision on Tuesday 26 september (10:00 - 11:30 CEST) on Immersive Media Preservation.
Choosing a Persistent Identifier Type for Your Digital Objects: New Technology Watch Guidance Note now available on general release
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has made the next in its series of Technology Watch Guidance Notes, Choosing a Persistent Identifier Type for Your Digital Objects by Remco van Veenendaal of the National Archives of the Netherlands, available on general release today.
Does net zero emissions from energy usage in the cloud mean carbon free digital preservation is on the horizon?
Matthew Addis is the Chief Technology Officer at Arkivum. If cloud infrastructure providers such as Google, AWS and Azure have net zero emissions from their use of energy, then does this mean we no longer need to worry about the carbon footprint of digital preservation in the cloud? The answer is no. Carbon emissions from energy consumption is just one part of the story. The embodied footprint [7] of all the ICT servers that run in the cloud also needs to be taken into...
DPC Reading Club: How the concept of AI technology impacts digital archival expertise
Today’s Reading Club session was a thought provoking discussion inspired by an article from Amber Cushing and Giulia Osti in the Journal of Documentation - “So how do we balance all of these needs?”: how the concept of AI technology impacts digital archival expertise (https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2022-0170). The article summarized the thoughts and expectations of a focus group of archival practitioners around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact on expertise within the sector. After a...
DPC Reading Club: a radical empathy approach to disk imaging
Our second DPC Reading Club was held last month and focused on an article by Monique Lassere and Jess M. Whyte called “Balancing Care and Authenticity in Digital Collections: A Radical Empathy Approach to Working with Disk Images” (available at https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v3i2.125) This paper was a great follow on from our reading from Thorsten Ries last time as it looked at the topic of digital forensics from a different angle, suggesting a ‘radical empathy’ approach to tackling disk...
The Anthropocene Remembered: Digital Memory After the Climate Crisis
I was honoured to give a keynote lecture at the start of the FIAT/ IFTA’s Media Management Seminar in May 2023. The text below is a slightly adapted version of the talk which was also recorded and will be made available in due course. It’s wonderful to be with you here in Dublin today and to meet as many friends and colleagues again after so long: this event hasn’t happened in person since 2019 and so it’s a privilege to be invited to be the opening keynote in a face to face meeting. My...
Time to get yourself N2KH-ready!
The newest training course in the Novice-to-Know-How series (N2KH) will be available soon. If you haven’t done the original N2KH Learning Pathway yet, now is the time! You might have already heard: for the past 4 months The National Archives in the UK and the Digital Preservation Coalition have been busy developing a new online training course on email preservation. The training is the latest in the digital preservation learning pathway “Novice to Know-How” and will be launched in June...
Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit 2.0 now available!
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is relaunching an updated version of the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit to coincide with the start of a week-long Relaunch Roadshow in Australasia this week. Focused on digital preservation activities, the Toolkit provides a guide to writing a business case and starts with factors to consider whilst planning your case, before offering templates and a step-by-step guide to drafting, construction and delivery. “There is no perfect...
FDO2022 Conference – human and social factors in data and metadata management
Louise Preston is a Project Officer at the National Archives of Australia. She attended FDO2022 with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Writing systems developed in Mesopotamia and other ancient societies to manage information because human memory simply could not store all information. It was a new and specialised field that began with only partial script. As writing and recording became more complex, the amount of information stored...
Call for Applicants: DPC Grant for 2023 AMaGA Conference in Australia
The DPC is pleased to offer a new Career Development Fund grant for the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA) National Conference 2023 (#AMaGA2023), being held 16-19 May across Murrook Cultural Centre, Newcastle City Hall and Civic Theatre in Awabakal & Worimi Land Newcastle, Australia. The grant will cover 100% of the registration fees as well as a contribution towards travel and accommodation. More details about the grant are provided below, and applications are welcomed...
File format recommendations - I wouldn’t say they are unacceptable, but I wouldn’t recommend them either
Last week I joined a webinar entitled “A Comparison of Recommended File Formats and the New Dutch Method for File Format Assessment”. It’s great to see the outcomes of this collaborative work, and it’s clear that it has already played an important role in bringing out some key themes in the preservation approaches of various organizations. But I felt that a number of aspects give cause for concern. The collation of file format policies has highlighted some approaches that I believe should be...
File format recommendations - I wouldn’t say they are unacceptable, but I wouldn’t recommend them either
Last week I joined a webinar entitled “A Comparison of Recommended File Formats and the New Dutch Method for File Format Assessment”. It’s great to see the outcomes of this collaborative work, and it’s clear that it has already played an important role in bringing out some key themes in the preservation approaches of various organizations. But I felt that a number of aspects give cause for concern. The collation of file format policies has highlighted some approaches that I believe should be...
Tapping the (Open) Source – No Time To Wait 2022
Nigel Bryant is Audiovisual Digitisation Officer at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. He recently attended No Time To Wait 6 with support from a travel grant from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. As part of my role, I am constantly striving to improve processes and workflow for the preservation of AV materials. I am currently implementing an open source workflow employing the Matroska (.mkv) video format, ideally using entirely Free and Open...
Notes After Attending the 2022 FIAF Film Restoration Summer School
Natalia Bianchi is a Digitisation Technician working with time-based media in the Access Team at Imperial War Museum. She attended the FIAF Film Restoration Summer School this year with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters. Even if film archives and cultural heritage institutions around the world are aware of the comprehensive film preservation policies that should be put in place, many analogue film collections are slowly deteriorating over...
DPC shares French translations of two Technology Watch Guidance Notes on World Digital Preservation Day
[Une version française suit] Adding to a range of other translated resources, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is delighted to share translations of two Technology Watch Guidance Notes: Preserving Databases and Developing an Access Strategy for Born Digital Archival Material. Now available in French, the Technology Watch Guidance Notes complement the DPC’s popular Technology Watch Report series and are designed to be a ‘bite-sized’ papers containing information about the specific...
Title: Preservation Digitisation Project – Digitising the Tasmanian Archives audio visual collection
Karin Haveman is Acting Manager Government Archives and Preservation at the Tasmanian Archives and Digitisation Services Coordinator In February 2021, Libraries Tasmania launched the Preservation Digitisation Project – a major collaborative project that brings together Digitisation Services, System Support and Delivery, Government Archives, and the Community Archives teams. The aim of this project is to digitise our Tasmanian film, sound, and video collections for long-term...
Funding digital preservation skills development
Natalie Baur is Program Director for DPOE-N Happy World Digital Preservation Day from your colleagues at the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N)! We are excited to celebrate this important day with you, and we wanted to share some of our resources and funding opportunities that are available to the community. DPOE-N was created by the Library of Congress in 2010 to provide digital preservation training across the U.S. The program transitioned to...