Introduction
Selecting and deploying solutions is challenging enough in well-established business processes: but where the processes are new, or where the available resource to support procurement is stretched, moving from project to ‘business as usual’ can be hard.
It helps that a healthy market of digital preservation tools and services is emerging rapidly, into which a series of companies and not-for-profit agencies are now supplying products. And so digital preservation staff are increasingly being asked to make confident choices between different products.
This marketplace could be characterised as a meeting between ‘problem owners’ and ‘solution providers.’ But as the number of available options grows, underlying technologies are in flux, and where requirements presume deferred benefits to future users, it can still be hard for problem owners and solution providers to find each other, let alone understand each other. Add to the process the ever-present question of ‘Digital Preservation Standards,’ which are, incidentally, typically designed for the validation of single information packages or entire institutions: not self-contained products, and you have ‘information overload,’ creating delay and confusion in a process which is already complicated. It means that even organisations which properly understand their digital preservation needs can be frustrated in solving them, while solution providers have to meet impractical and at times unfeasible expectations.
The Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to host a briefing day that will explore themes related to procuring and implementing digital preservation solutions within complicated organizations, illustrated with case studies from members and the practical experience of solution providers.
This day-long session will provide a neutral forum where those involved in procuring digital preservation solutions can talk directly and without prejudice about the challenges they face. The dialogue that results aims to clarify the process of requirements gathering and lower the barriers to effective procurement.
Presentations will:
- examine requirements from the perspective of the developer and the collection owner
- discuss and procedures for procurement of preservation solution
- present recent case studies and good practice in the development of requirements
- introduce and examine the range of proprietary and open source solutions for digital preservation currently available
- Allow vendors to explain their own requirements, improving understanding all round.
The day will include a moderated ‘open mic’ session where technologists, procurement managers and collection owners will be free to discuss and review obstacles to procuring practical digital preservation.
Who should come?
These workshops will interest:
- Collections managers, librarians, curators and archivists in all institutions
- IT managers and procurement managers in memory institutions
- Records managers in institutions with a need for long-lived data
- CIOs and CTOs in organisations with commercial intellectual property
- Vendors and developers with digital preservation solutions
- Researchers with interests in research data management
Programme
Members, please login to watch the recorded sessions
- 1000 – Registration open, tea and coffee
- 1030 – Welcome and Introductions
- 1035 – 'From process to solution: What I have learned' with Marc Fresko
- 1115 – Q&A
- 1120 – 'Internal Advocacy: persuading a complex organisation it needs Digital Preservation' with Chris Fryer, Parliamentary Archives
- 1140 – 'Cloudy horizons: testing different solutions' with Lee Hibberd, National Library of Scotland
- 1240 – Q&A
- 1245 – Lunch
- 1345 – Service Providers’ case studies: 'What makes a supplier happy?' with Arkivum and Preservica
- 1425 – 'Keeping the disks spinning: Communication matters' with Tim Gollins, National Records of Scotland
- 1445 – Q&A
- 1500 – Coffee
- 1530 – Roundtable
- 1610 – Next steps and thanks
- 1615 – Close
Missed it?
Slides from the event are linked from the speaker listings in the programme above. Recordings are available to members, once logged in.