Reappraising Appraisal

Check your local time for the event here.

In the spring of 2024, the DPC asked its Full Members what topics they’d like to explore during the coming year, and “appraisal” came right near the top of the list of responses.

Appraisal is a well-established, core function of digital collecting organizations and archives. We all do it, but we all seem to worry about whether we’re doing it right, how other people are doing it, and whether we could be doing it better. It’s not even clear that we all agree on what we mean by “appraisal” when it comes to dealing with digital data and records. Do conventional ideas of selection and collection development still have a place? Can we reliably and consistently separate the appraisal of intellectual content and perceived value to the organization or users, from issues of file format or carrier? When it comes to the appraisal – or reappraisal – of digital materials, how can we do it at scale? Will automating some aspects of our appraisal workflows help us deal with the deluge of digital data?

This half-day event will bring together organizations facing new challenges around appraising digitized and born-digital data. We will also hear from practitioners who have developed new appraisal workflows to cope with the challenges of digital materials. And we will learn about some of the latest work to develop checklists and selection criteria, that we can take up and adapt in order to help make our appraisal processes more consistent and manageable.

A watch party for Members in Australasia/Asia-Pacific time zones is provisionally scheduled to take place on: 25th September, 2024.

Programme (Times in UTC)

13:00-13:10 - Welcome, housekeeping, and brief introduction to event from Michael Popham (DPC)

13:10-13:35 - Lisa Lawlis (Western Libraries) - "Appraising the appraisal of born digital records: Challenges in navigating the 'weight' of appraisal in building workflows"

13:35-14:00 - Amanda Tome, Erin Clary (Digital Research Alliance of Canada) –  "A Curated List of Appraisal Challenges"

 14:00-14:10 - Break #1

14:10-14:35 - Beth Knazook (Digital Repository of Ireland), Mikala Narlock (Data Curation Network), Erin Clary (Digital Research Alliance of Canada) - “Tick, Tock, Your Data’s on the Clock: A Curatorial Preservation Checklist for Data Repositories”

14:35-15:00 - Nathan Tallman (APTrust), Lauren Work (Yale University), Martha Anderson (University of Arkansas), Virginia Dressler (Kent State University) Chelsea Denault (Michigan Digital Preservation Network) - "Introducing the Digital Stewardship Appraisal Framework."

15:00-15:10 - Break #2

15:10-15:35 - Leona Fearon, Jayne Hutchinson (Public Record Office Northern Ireland) - "Digital Appraisal in Dynamic Times"

15:35-16:00 - Emmeline Kaser, Adriane Hanson (University of Georgia Libraries) - "Scaling Born-Digital Appraisal"

16:00-16:25 - General discussion/Q&A - All available speakers

16:25-16:30 - Closing remarks and wrap-up

Recordings

Recordings from the Watch Party can be found here.

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. We encourage diversity in all its forms and are committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation, whilst remaining technology and vendor neutral. We ask all those who are part of this community to be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.