News

The National Archives of Ireland has today joined the Digital Preservation Coalition. The DPC is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation, enabling its members to deliver resilient long-term access to content and services, and helping them derive enduring value from digital collections. The core mission of the National Archives is to collect, manage, and preserve the public record of Ireland and ensure its long term availability as a research resource and to underpin citizens’ rights. The long term availability of the public record demonstrates transparency and accountability in the democratic process.

Speaking today, John McDonough, the Director of the National Archives noted that ‘Joining the DPC will enable the National Archives to address matters such as the capture, curation and preservation of the public record which is increasingly generated in electronic format. The National Archives will be able to leverage experience, technical knowledge and policy development from amongst the members of the DPC. Membership of the DPC will ensure the National Archives is better placed to meet the significant challenges it faces in this area.’

The DPC is delighted to welcome the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority as its latest full member.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is a non-departmental public body set up to ensure that the UK’s 17 designated civil public sector nuclear sites are decommissioned and cleaned up safely and efficiently. Managing Director of the NDA National Archives, Simon Tucker recognises the enormous challenge of maintaining access to digital resources and believes “the DPC’s expertise in long-term digital information management will bring major benefits to our information governance programme.”

The DPC is delighted to welcome Loughborough University as its latest associate member. This new membership is also something of a milestone; Loughborough University is now the 50th member of the ever-growing Coalition. William Kilbride, Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) said ‘I am delighted to welcome Loughborough University as our 50th member which is an important landmark in our development and a great opportunity to celebrate our shared endeavour. Loughborough has a large volume of digital educational resources and it is wonderful to see institutions with such expertise recognising the need to collaborate on digital preservation.’

Adrienne Muir, Senior Lecturer in Publishing within the School of the Arts, English and Drama explained why Loughborough decided to join the DPC; ‘Various groups across the institution are involved in

The Bank of England Archive contains over 80,000 files and individual records relating to all aspects of the history of the Bankand its work, dating from its foundation in 1694 to the present.

“As part of its mission to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability, the Bank of England is committed to being open and accountable,” explains Dr. Mike Anson, the Bank of England’s Archive Manager. “To underpin this transparency the Bank of England Archive collects, stores and makes available Bank records which are of business and research value.”

“Joining the DPC is an important step towards the Bank meeting the digital challenge. We hope it will give us access to specialist knowledge and advice, the experiences of other information professionals, especially those in the business field. As a member of the board, we are also looking forward to being involved in the development of digital preservation more generally.”

The DPC is delighted to welcome the University of Sheffield Library as its latest member.

‘This is an exciting time to be involved in Digital Preservation at the University of Sheffield’, explained Tracey Clarke, Assistant Director for Academic Services. ‘We’re in the process of recruiting a new Digital Preservation Officer and are currently tendering for systems. We’re writing a digital preservation policy, establishing a collections schedule and enhancing how we handle digital research outputs.’