The DPC and the Archives and Records Association are pleased to invite students and researchers in archives, records management and librarianship to a half day conference on practical workplace skills in digital preservation. Hosted by University College London, and organised in partnership with the University of Aberystwyth and the University of Dundee, this mini-conference will bring a select group of leading practitioners together with the next generation of archivists, records managers and ibrarians to discuss the challenges of digital collections management and digital preservation. In a lively set of presentations and discussions, each of the speakers will be invited to reflect on 'the things I wish I knew before I started' - giving students an advantage in their own career development, and helping those who frame the curriculum a chance to extend their students' readiness for the workplace.
1330 Welcome and introduction (Sarah Higgins – University of Aberystwyth)
1335 Digital preservation – key challenges and key skills (William Kilbride DPC)
1400 Digital archives and digital preservation – what I wish someone had told me before I started (Dave Thompson, Wellcome Library)
1420 Making sense of digital collections – ingest, characterisation and workflows in archives (Adrian Brown, Parliamentary Archives)
1440 A rough guide to digital preservation: the challenges of an increasingly digital world (Andrew Fetherston, Museum of London)
1500 Archiving the UK Web – (Helen Hockx-Yu British Library)
1530 Tea and coffee
1600 Panel: the next generation of digital archivist (chaired by Sarah Higgins)
Speakers' Biographies
Adrian is Assistant Clerk of the Records at the Parliamentary Archives in London, where he is responsible for digital and analogue preservation, cataloguing and digitisation. He began his career as a field archaeologist, after studying Medieval Literature at the University of Durham. In 1994, he moved to the English Heritage Centre for Archaeology in Portsmouth, where he was responsible for managing its archaeological archives and other information resources. In this role, he developed and implemented a digital archiving programme to enable the long-term preservation and re-use of the CfA's extensive and diverse digital collections. Adrian moved to the Digital Preservation Department of the UK National Archives in 2002, and was appointed Head of Digital Preservation in 2005. In that role he was responsible for the long-term preservation of born-digital public records created by the UK government and courts, including the development of the PRONOM and DROID tools and a web archiving programme, and led the team which won the international Digital Preservation Award in 2007 and the 2011 Queen's Award for Enterprise in Innovation. He has lectured and published widely on all aspects of digital preservation.
- Sarah Higgins
Sarah Higgins lectures in Archives Administration and Records Management at Aberystwyth University, where her research focuses on the lifecycle management of digital materials by archives services, libraries and other information professionals. She was formerly employed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) where she led the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model Project and the standards advisory function. She moved to the DCC from the University of Edinburgh where she worked in both Special Collections and the Digital Library undertaking a variety of metadata development and co-ordination roles across their cultural collections. A trained cartographer she was previously in charge of the British Antarctic Survey's Geographical Information Collection and Secretary to the UK Government's Advisory Committee on Antarctic Place-names.
- Helen Hockx-Yu
Helen Hockx-Yu, Head of Web Archiving at the British Library, leads a team of web archivists and technologists to archive and preserve the UK web. Previously, Helen was project manager of the Planets project, a four-year project co-funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Programme to address core digital preservation challenges. Before joining the British Library, Helen worked as a Programme Manager at the UK Joint Information Systems Committee, overseeing JISC's technology research and development activities in the area of digital preservation.
- William Kilbride
William is Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a not for profit membership organisation which exists to enable and advocate long term access to digital objects. William started his career as an archaeologist in the early 1990s when the expertise and enthusiasm to use new technologies to detect and dismantle archaeological sites was not matched by a capacity to preserve the data that resulted. This led him into research in digital preservation. He was previously Lecturer in Archaeology at Glasgow University, Assistant Director of the Archaeology Data Service in York and research manager at Glasgow Museums.
- Patricia Sleeman
Patricia has worked in digital preservation for more than 10 years at ULCC. Projects she has worked on include: The National Digital Archive of Datasets, EVAMP,The Digital Preservation Training Programme, Digitisation Preservation project (JISC). She has also worked on various consultancies for both UK and internal organisations. Recent work has included the EU/UNESCO funded House of Books Project working with The Iraq National Library and Archives. She speaks Irish and Spanish and has played an active role in various professional archival organisations, both in the UK and internationally.
- Dave Thompson
Notes from the event
Notes from the event have been kindly provided by Rebecca Volk
The event has also been blogged by Catherin MacIntyre of LSE archives who attended: http://lib-1.lse.ac.uk/archivesblog/?p=4012
