The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is inviting the digital preservation community to submit nominations of at-risk digital materials to its 2023 edition of the ‘Bit List’ by Friday 30th June.
A free-to-access and open resource for digital preservation advocacy, the DPC's Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Species (or Bit List for short) is a community-sourced list of at-risk digital materials which is revised every two years. Entries to the list are nominated by the community, who are at the forefront of digital preservation efforts, and reviewed by international organizations which represent global expertise in the preservation of the listed digital species.
By compiling and maintaining the Bit List, the DPC aims to equip digital preservation practitioners with independent evidence that digital materials are critically endangered, and that action is required, in order to support their targeted advocacy efforts.
“Using the Bit List made our case for digital preservation much stronger when we could to point to an independently verified resource which also provides recommendations for good practice against each of the entries,” explains Leo Konstantelos at the University of Glasgow.
Current entries include content types like social media or specific file formats; media types like floppy disks or obsolete optical media; or data from specific contexts like politically sensitive content or community archives which are not at risk for any technical reason but reside in unstable contexts. Nominations to the Bit List 2023 could combine any or all of these themes.
Once the nominations have been collected and collated, the Bit List Council – comprising experts which represent global expertise in the preservation of the listed digital species – will evaluate the entries before arriving at their final list which will be published on 2nd November 2023 for World Digital Preservation Day; providing digital preservationists around the globe with an updated advocacy tool on a day designed to draw attention to this real and current challenge.
Make your nomination for the DPC’s Digitally Endangered Species by Friday 30th June.
To read more about how DPC members like the University of Glasgow have used the Bit List to support their own advocacy activities, visit the DPC Blog where we will publish a ‘Byte-sized Bit List’ post every month until WDPD.
Have you used the Bit List in a business case, presentation or bid to help make the case for digital preservation action? The DPC would love to hear your story, please contact: sarah.middleton@dpconline.org
Join the conversation on social media about the Global Bit List of Endangered Digital Species using the hashtag #DPCBitList and #WDPD2023.