The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is a registered company (Registered no: 4492292) and charity (Charity no. SC051077).
We are a membership organisation, managed by a small team of full time staff and overseen by a Board of Directors appointed from our Full Members. Our primary function is to deliver on behalf of our members. We were established in 2002 as a collaboration between a number of agencies operating in the UK and Ireland. Although our program and our membership has changed a lot since 2002, we remain true to the founding principles of community oversight described in our Articles of Association and Memorandum of Incorporation. The majority of our income is still derived from the annual subscriptions which members pay: and our workplan is scrutinised and approved by our members annually.
Our Vision
The Digital Preservation Coalition is building a welcoming and inclusive global community, working together to bring about a sustainable future for our digital assets.
Our Mission
We enable our members to deliver resilient, sustainable and useful long-term access to digital content and services, helping them to access and use digital materials beyond the limits of technical obsolescence, media degradation and organizational change.
We raise awareness of the strategic, cultural and technological challenges which our members face, independent of the interests of solution providers, and we encourage collaboration for mutual benefit and the greater good.
We sustain and deliver these aims through advocacy, community engagement, workforce development, good practice and good governance. These actions create, empower, structure and extend a global community, working together for a sustainable digital legacy. This ambition for the greater good underpins our charitable purpose.
Our Objectives
Our Strategic Plan for 2022 - 2027 defines five objectives:
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Community: by offering a warm welcome to all agencies and individuals with an interest in digital preservation and providing an efficient and effective platform for meaningful and sustained professional exchange.
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Advocacy: by working towards a climate of public and institutional policy which is better informed and better inclined towards digital preservation.
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Workforce Development: by providing opportunities for our members to acquire, develop and retain competent and responsive workforces that are ready to address the challenges of digital preservation.
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Good Practice: by supporting our members towards greater maturity in digital preservation through knowledge exchange, continuous improvement, horizon scanning, advice on standards, authoritative publications, and engaging and informative events.
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Accountable, Sustainable and Dynamic Governance: by maintaining and enhancing our organizational functions and structures to ensure good governance.
These objectives are realised in our current DPC Prospectus 2023 - 2024 (also available in Arabic , Chinese , French , German and Spanish ).
Our Values
The DPC’s vision correlates closely to the UN Sustainable Development Goals of ‘a better and more sustainable future for all people and the world by 2030’. We have explicitly mapped our values and objectives to these goals, both in what we do and the leadership we seek to provide. Members and colleagues who engage with the DPC should recognize our values in their experience of the DPC and may be asked to adopt them when working with us or interacting through us.
In all that it does, the DPC will:
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Care for our members, resources, people and environment
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Maintain neutrality in respect to solutions, approaches, sectors, suppliers and vendors
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Be open, transparent and accountable to members
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Amplify the needs and successes of our members
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Be open to all stakeholders with a presumption of positive intent
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Respond to the needs of members in the delivery of services
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Be authoritative, current and concise in all our publications and communications
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Be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent in all our dealings
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Be evidence-led, making effective use of data in decision making
The DPC will act on its values and be transparent with respect to how they have been implemented by building these into our work plans and reporting explicitly to members about them.
Our Policies
To enable us to meet these goals, the DPC maintains necessary policies, clearly and openly stating the organisation's commitment to issues such as privacy, inclusion and diversity. Read more.