At the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), we are quite delighted to have been invited to write four blog posts to mark International Archives Week, and more particularly, digital preservation day.
Borrowing many of its procedures and processes from traditional archiving, digital preservation is a set of managed and ongoing activities: actively monitoring, planning, administering and managing digital materials, systems and workflows, to ensure the longevity of digital materials beyond the limits of technology obsolescence and degradation.
Digital preservation is also an awful lot of other things. It is an opportunity, it is a risk, it requires people and resources and (some) technology and understanding across an organisation. I’m sure many archivists will recognise these factors and facets in their own work too.
The theme of this year’s International Archives Week is ‘Empowering Knowledge Communities’ and the DPC exists to help its members deliver sustainable access to digital materials, for as long as required, addressing the full spectrum of digital preservation activities.
This short series of blog posts for International Archives Week focuses on a selection of those activities – beginning with raising awareness of digital preservation (post follows this introduction), also offering practical advice on getting started in digital preservation, how to access digital preservation training and maturity modelling.
The series leads us up to a digital preservation themed webinar, co-hosted by the International Council on Archives and DPC, later today (10 June at 15:00 CET). There, we will introduce and ask digital preservation specialists what they wish they knew before getting started in the field. We hope you’ll join us!
Places to attend this webinar have now all been allocated. Please follow @ICArchiv on Twitter or ICA International Council on Archives on facebook for further information about streaming.
From all at the DPC, warm and hearty wishes for a happy International Archives Week!