New Members

The Digital Preservation Coalition welcomes Lancaster University Library as its newest Associate Member this week.

Currently establishing its digital preservation policy specifically to look after the long-term preservation of research outcomes, the Library’s key aim is to ensure that future generations can benefit from the scholarly digital outputs created by the world-class research and teaching undertaken at Lancaster University. One of the Jisc RDSS pilot institutions, Lancaster University brings extensive experience of working with shared services, interoperability between systems and applying this expertise to digital preservation.

Data Archiving and Network Service (DANS) has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) this week, becoming its newest Associate member.

Underpinning and continuously improving its services through research on sustainable access to digital research resources, DANS was a member of the 4C Project (Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation) and was part of the team which developed the Curation Costs Exchange (CCEx). Launched in 2014, the CCEx is a community owned platform which helps organisations of any kind assess the costs of curation practices through comparison and analysis. Allowing the CCEx aims to provide real information about costs to help make more informed investments in digital curation. 

“DANS is a wonderful, world-leading organisation, well known to many in the digital preservation community.  Their list of achievements and history of innovation is daunting, but even more important has been the openness and generosity which characterizes their approach. They have been at the forefront of some very important initiatives over the years, like the Data Seal of Approval, the Research Data Alliance and the 4C Project,” says Executive Director of the DPC William Kilbride. “DANS was a key partner in the development of the Curation Costs Exchange, work which we will sustain and progress as we continue to collaborate on our shared challenge of digital preservation.”

The Digital Preservation Coalition welcomes Durham University as its latest Associate Member this week.

While the University looks after parchment, paper and other physical documents going back centuries, digital material presents new challenges for both storage and retrieval. A new Digital Repository will provide capacity for the storage, preservation and dissemination of digital material of all kinds; including open access research publications, research data, theses, digitised versions of items from archives, rare books, museum and art collections, and the archives of the University. The repository is crucial to the University’s dissemination of research outputs, compliance with research funding requirements, and managed access to digital resources of all kinds, for research, education, administration, external engagement and communication.

The University of Melbourne Library has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition this week, becoming the DPC’s newest Associate member.

The University of Melbourne is Australia’s leading research-intensive University, generating considerable digital collections of enduring value. The University Library provides key research infrastructure in the form of scholarly and research collections, support and services which include digitisation services, data forensics services and research data management support. The University of Melbourne Digital Preservation Strategy aims to ensure that preservation of digital materials is integrated into the University’s research programmes. It outlines a ten-year program which will make the University’s digital outputs available to future generations.

The University of Kent’s Templeman Library has become the latest organisation to join the Digital Preservation Coalition, making it the twenty-fifth University to do so.

The library’s digital preservation activities focus on digitised and born-digital collections curated by Information Services on behalf of the University. These include research data sets, research outputs, and archive material cared for by Special Collections & Archives, as well as images created by the Digital Imaging team services, and associated metadata held within digital files and within catalogues/databases.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is pleased to announce that Library and Archives Canada (LAC) became an Associate Member of the Coalition in March, last month.

LAC is in the process of formalizing its digital preservation program, in order to meet its national mandate for long term preservation and enduring access to Canada’s documentary heritage, and to serve as the continuing memory of the Government of Canada and its institutions.

The Scottish Council on Archives (SCA) has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition this month, becoming its newest Associate Member.

In its capacity as a leadership, advocacy and development body a key strategic goal of the SCA is to support the sector in its development of capacity and organisational sponsorship, so that the whole sector is equipped to identify, curate and make accessible digital information for the long term.

As well as helping  to raise awareness of digital preservation issues at high profile conferences and events, SCA has made a significant contribution to ensure new models of recruitment and skills development that help address the digital skills gap. It’s HLF-funded 'Opening up Scotland’s Archives' traineeship programme has brought fresh and diverse talent into the sector and offered an excellent platform for advocacy and communication, bringing benefits across the sector and sharing the 2016 Digital Preservation Award with a partner project operated by the National Archives in England.

The UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism) became the Digital Preservation Coalition’s newest Full member in January this year.

The Mechanism is mandated to manage the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as its own archives, which consist of both physical and digital records.

Long standing Associate Member, the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) has joined forces with the University of Glasgow Library and upgraded membership to become the latest Full Member of the DPC at the start of 2017.

With HATII joining the Coalition in 2010, ongoing collaborative initiatives with the Digital Curation Centre and Digital Preservation Europe, as well as the library’s commitment to sustaining access to digital materials, have meant that the University of Glasgow has continued to make a significant contributions to research, teaching and application of practices in Cultural Heritage, Digital Humanities and Information Management and Analysis.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is very pleased to welcome the Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) as its newest associate member. Based in the USA at the University of Virginia, the APTrust is a 16-member consortium of American research university libraries committed to the creation and management of a sustainable environment for digital preservation.