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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Documents
pdf Directory of Digital Repositories and Services in the UK June 2005
Directory of Digital Repositories and Services in the UK June 2005
Articles
World Digital Preservation Day
At-Risk Digital Materials About World Digital Preservation Day World Digital Preservation Day is held on the first Thursday of every November. This year we will celebrate all things digital preservation on 7th November 2019! With the theme 'At-Risk Digital Materials' the digital preservation community will come together to celebrate their work - the collections they have preserved, the access they have maintained and the...
Digital Preservationists Anonymous at iPres 2019
What Past Participants Have to Say "Digital Preservationists Anonymous (DPA) is a safe and enriching opportunity to share professional frustrations, mistakes and fears. Sharing these wardrobe skeletons and horrible imaginings in confidence with other DPC members is a liberating and cathartic experience. A problem shared at DPA doesn't become a problem halved, it becomes a discussion that moves forward with perspective, expertise and solidarity." -Anonymous “Fail Club was a great forum to...
Motivation to Undertake File Format Identification Research for Plain Text Files
Dr Santhilata Kuppili Venkata is Digital Preservation Specialist / Researcher at The National Archives, UK The file format identification problem has been of interest for quite some time in the areas of digital archiving and digital forensics. Many researchers are working to find a solution to this problem. While most of the work is done to identify files with binary file formats, not much work is found to identify the file type of plain text files. In this digital era, files are...
Ten things I've learned about using OAIS from a sprawling twitter convo
Throughout the last couple of days I've blundered about the twitterspace, having a multidimensional debate about OAIS, prompted in the first instance by this tweet: HEY I KNOW YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING for the latest thing I hate about OAIS, so here it is:OAIS's “designated community” concept strongly implies that the only communities of interest to preservationists are those who should understand the data. — Ondatra iSchoolicus (@LibSkrat) August 27, 2019 I've done some ranting, I've got...
Web Archiving & Preservation Task Force
Description This gathering of the Web Archiving & Preservation Task Force (WAPTF) will provide an opportunity for delegates to discuss the web archiving and preservation topics important to their institutions, their collections, and their users. Hosted by Tate, the meeting will progress issues raised at the last meeting, such as the formation of sub-groups around specific areas of interest like social media. Remote Joining For those unable to attend in-person, the meeting will be accessible...
An update from Oxford
Michael Popham is Head of Digital Collections & Preservation at Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford It has now been six months since the Polonsky funded “Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge” project (www.dpoc.ac.uk) officially came to a close, but the impact of this work is still causing ripples across both organizations. Within the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, we have been seeking funding to support a number of business cases created as a direct...
Digital Preservationists Anonymous
Summary Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth. Richelle E. Goodrich We all know that the most valuable learning is often made when trying things out in practice and sometimes making mistakes. Sharing that experience in a public forum is, unfortunately, not usually an option however. This event, seeks to provide a safe space to share, discuss and...
‘Access is What we are Preserving’: But for Whom?
David Underdown and Leontien Talboom work at The National Archives UK Designated Communities, Representation Information and Knowledge Bases in a Wiki World Thanks to Andy Jackson of the British Library's web archiving team for partial inspiration for the title of this post (the rest of the conversation is also largely relevant to the post too) I like to push this a little further: Access is what we are preserving. https://t.co/OKwB3oU5ak — Andy Jackson (@anjacks0n) February...
New Slack Workspace on Digital Preservation Training
A key aim of the Digital Preservation Coalition as it continues to grow and develop its Workforce Development activities is to help facilitate collaboration, and knowledge and skill sharing for those working on the provision of Digital Preservation training. There are many fantastic DP training initiatives around the world, but they often work in isolation, meaning there may be duplication of effort in developing resources and limited reach in terms of audience. In the hope of increasing...
A new maturity model for digital preservation
We’d like to tell you a little bit about a digital preservation maturity model we have been developing for DPC members. “What? Another maturity model?” you might say. Indeed there are many maturity models already available, so why create another? To answer that, I’ll give you a bit of background as to how this particular piece of work came about and how we have approached it.
Digital preservation in a nuclear context - the first six months
Last month I celebrated my 6 month work anniversary at the DPC. Happily, this coincided with our first DPC York team night out. Did it really take 6 months to get the 3 of us out for a drink after work? Apparently yes! My first 6 months at the DPC really has flown by. I haven’t been blogging as much as I expected, but that is largely down to the fact I’ve been keeping my head down, travelling lots and working hard on the project I was recruited for - a collaboration with the UK Nuclear...
Undateables – methods for determining date ranges for born-digital documents when file system dates go bad
Paul Young is Digital Preservation Specialist/Researcher at the National Archives UK What’s the problem? Determining reliable dates for digital records can be a source of frustration, especially when confronted with a large volume of digital files with dates that are obviously incorrect, such as why your Microsoft Word Document 1997 version dates from 1st January 1970. Dates are very important for The National Archives in particular as we look to transfer records from departments under...
The 'Capstone' email appraisal approach
Alexander Roberts is Digital Humanities Manager/Research Data Manager at Swansea University and attended iPRES2018 with support from the DPC's Leadership Programme which is generously funded by DPC Supporters Welcome to my second blog post relating to themes and projects which sparked my imagination as a result of attending iPres2018, the international digital preservation conference, last September in Boston, USA. As I mentioned in my previous blog post discussing...
The Application of Preservation Planning Templates to a Personal Digital Collection – Reflections on the Process
Introduction The PAWDOC collection was initiated in 1981 to support research into new office systems at the National Computing Centre in Manchester. The author continued to use the collection to manage all his documents throughout his subsequent IT career. The collection’s index contains six fields (Ref No, Title, Movement Status, Publication Date, Date Last Accessed, and Creation Date). Each of the 17,000 Index entries related to one or more of some 29,000 electronic files of a wide variety...
DPA2018 Winners Webinars: EPISODE 3 - Navigating the PDF/A Standard
The Digital Preservation Awards 2018 (DPA2018) Winners Webinar Series provides an opportunity to learn more about some of the latest and best digital preservation initiatives, recently celebrated by the Digital Preservation Awards on World Digital Preservation Day 2018 in Amsterdam. Each episode explores the winning entry for each category of the Digital Preservation Awards, providing an overview of each initiative, investigating how their work might be used within the community, and...
Save Your Social Media: a quick 'how-to' for downloading your valuable photos and content shared online
This post is for anyone with a social media account - not just those working professionally in digital preservation - who want to keep their valuable photos and content safe. Some quick pointers on saving and backing-up social media photos and other content Social media platforms – including Flickr, Facebook (& Instagram), Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other Google services – are designed for sharing not archiving. When you tick ‘agree’ to their User Agreements, you license...
DPA2018 Winners Webinars: EPISODE 2 - Archivists Guide to Kryoflux
The Digital Preservation Awards 2018 (DPA2018) Winners Webinar Series provides an opportunity to learn more about some of the latest and best digital preservation initiatives, recently celebrated by the Digital Preservation Awards on World Digital Preservation Day 2018 in Amsterdam. Each episode explores the winning entry for each category of the Digital Preservation Awards, providing an overview of each initiative, investigating how their work might be used within the community, and...
What do you think about the NDSA Levels of Preservation?
Corey Davis is Chair of the Levels Reboot Project Implementation Subgroup for NDSA and Digital Preservation Coordinator for Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) As many of you will remember, a very smart group of people–including Megan Phillips, Jefferson Bailey, Andrea Goethals, and Trevor Owens–helped the NDSA launched its Levels of Preservation guidelines in 2013. Since then, they’ve become a fixture in the digital preservation community, influencing...
Ironing out the digital: Housekeeping at UAL
Elisabeth Thurlow is Digital Archives & Collections Implementation Manager at the University of the Arts London Across the six colleges which make up the University of the Arts London (UAL)1 we hold over 120 archives and special collections, many of which contain an increasing amount of digital content – both digitised and born digital materials. These collections chart past and contemporary creative arts practice; the development of art and design education; and the emerging digital...
Levels of Preservation Reboot Overview and Update
Bradley Daigle is Chair of the NDSA Coordinating Committee, NDSA Levels of Preservation Working Group and content and strategic expert for the Academic Preservation Trust A little background About the NDSA: The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) is a consortium of preservation-minded organizations scattered across the globe. Do not let the “national” part of the title lead you to believe that this is a US-only effort. We have partners of all shapes and sizes—including some...