The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) opens the International Conference on Digital Preservation, iPres 2022, at the impressive Technology & Innovation Centre in their home city of Glasgow today.
Bringing together over 600 information scientists, students, researchers, archivists, librarians, service providers, software developers and practitioners, iPres is the premier and longest-running conference series on digital preservation. Since 2004, annual iPres conferences have been hosted around the globe on four continents. And this year, between 12th – 16th September, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) hosts the 18th conference as part of their 20th Anniversary celebrations.
Dr. William Kilbride, Executive Director of the DPC and General Chair of iPres 2022, remarks: ‘The Digital Preservation Coalition represents and supports a diverse and dynamic community. We work for and through our members and allies around the world. Since our foundation in 2002 we have been welcomed around the world, offering expertise, advocacy and encouragement for digital preservation. This week, in the year marking the twentieth anniversary of our foundation, it will be our pleasure to repay that generosity, renew those friendships, and welcome delegates from all over the world to our home town.’
'Our toast to delegates, and to all of the digital preservation community around the world, based on the motto of our host city, is ‘Let Digits Flourish’. And may iPres flourish too.'
The conference in Glasgow is the largest to date, with 419 delegates participating in-person and a further 190 joining the conference online. Over the course of five days, the conference offers a packed program headed by keynote speeches from Amina Shah, National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland, Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty, director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, and Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For the first four days, delegates will debate and profile their research on digital preservation, moving the topic from a technology driven niche specialism of experts to a discussion about the role we all have to play in this global and universal challenge. On the final day of the conference, delegates will visit institutions throughout Scotland to see how some of Scotland’s finest collections are being preserved.
The Digital Preservation Coalition is an international charitable foundation which supports digital preservation, helping its members around the world to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services. Officially launched in 2002, the DPC was charged with fostering joint action to address the urgent challenges of securing the preservation of digital resources in the UK and to work with others internationally to secure our global digital memory and knowledge base.
The DPC now has members in different sectors, in twenty countries and on five continents. They represent, amongst others, global corporations, national and local memory institutions, higher education and research institutions, broadcasters, strategic investors and funding bodies and professional bodies.