News

The DPC is pleased to announce the publication of a series of "Digital Preservation Topical Notes", produced with the kind support of the National Archives of Ireland.

This series of topical notes aims to address key issues of digital preservation for a non-specialist audience. Starting with "What is Digtal Preservation?" , the notes examine why digital preservation is important, while giving an overview of the steps needed to maintain access to digital information. Written specifically with record creators in mind, the notes also provide simple guidance on how they can ensure their digital records are preservation ready.

The full series of ten notes is now available on the DPC Website: https://www.dpconline.org/knowledge-base/dp-topical-notes

The Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to announce that Jenny Mitcham will join the DPC staff in November in a new role as Head of Good Practice and Standards.

Jen is well known to the DPC membership and the wider digital preservation and archives community from her current work at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York.  Originally trained as an archaeologist and a graduate of the Universities of Nottingham and Southampton. She administered the Clwyd-Powys Sites and Monuments Record in the late nineties before moving into digital preservation as a Digital Archivist with the Archaeology Data Service for nine years, helping to shape archiving practices and procedures as the discipline evolved.

This month sees the addition of two new organisations to the DPC’s Supporter Program. The Coalition welcomes:

• Ex Libris, Cloud-based Solutions provider for the Higher Education sector.
• Formpipe, Developer of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Information Quality Management and Electronic Quality Management System (eQMS) software solutions.

Both organisations have committed to supporting the DPC, and to a constructive collaboration for the benefit of the whole digital preservation community.

“As the membership of the DPC diversifies and expands globally, it is essential that both users and the solution providers who support our community have a meaningful way to communicate and learn from each other” explains Executive Director of the DPC, William Kilbride. “We are delighted therefore to see these organisations, which represent various aspects of digital preservation, choosing to support the DPC in this way.”

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will host the International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPres) in Glasgow in 2022.

https://ipres2022.scot/

The iPres conference is a global forum for research and development in digital preservation.  Held every year since 2004 it has been held on four continents, embracing a variety of topics in digital preservation from strategy to implementation, and from international and local initiatives.  It welcomes small organizations and large; established leaders and new entrants. Year on year the debate and research profiled at iPres have moved digital preservation from a niche specialism of experts to a global challenge with the community to match.

The DPC is long-standing part of the digital preservation community around the world, helping to address the challenge of reliable access to digital resources from its base in Glasgow, and the Coalition’s network will be used to good effect. Representing and working on behalf of the diverse and dynamic digital preservation community around the world, the DPC will draw from the expertise of its membership, as well as lessons learned in community engagement, administration and the dissemination of research, to deliver a world-class program on the state of the art in digital preservation for all parts of the community from creators, curators, funders, researchers, solution providers and users.

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in the organisation's Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. With this in mind the DPC has now published its Inclusion and Diversity Policy, setting out clear commitments to supporting the healthy growth of the digital preservation community as a place where all are welcome and invited to contribute.

In a 2-year partnership starting in August 2018 the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has begun a new project which will establish a programme of work for digital preservation at the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) in the UK, enabling also a significant expansion of the DPC’s capacity to deliver for members.

The NDA has been charged by the UK and Scottish Governments with the complicated task of decommissioning and cleaning the seventeen principal nuclear energy plants in the UK, a task accurately described as the largest and most important environmental restoration programme in Europe.  The extended life cycle of the programme, set alongside robust commitments to security, integrity and safety, means the NDA approaches its work with a profound commitment to long-term information management, ensuring the right information is available to the right people in a format they can use and with the confidence that it can be trusted.  Therefore, amongst its many challenges, the NDA is by default required to become a trusted leader for information management and digital preservation.

The Digital Preservation Coalition is delighted to announce that digitization services provider TownsWeb Archiving is the latest organization to join its Supporter Program.

TownsWeb Archiving currently provides digitization, metadata creation and digital collections management software services to the UK cultural heritage sector. With clients including Cadbury’s, Marks & Spencer, Diageo, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Transport for London, Bank of England, GSK and more, TownsWeb works with archives, museums and libraries to digitize their fragile and precious collections and open up access to them online through their PastView system.

With a wealth of experience in advising how best to create digital materials, TownsWeb is now working towards incorporating digital preservation services in order to meet a growing need to sustain access to a digital legacy in the long term; potentially by collaborating with other existing DPC Supporters.