Blog

Barbara Sierman is a Digital Preservation Consultant 

Is digital preservation a profession? And if so, what characterizes it as a profession? If you look at a skilled carpenter, the professionalism is defined by the skills of the carpenter, the tools that are used, the flexibility to apply centuries old knowledge in different situations and materials and above all, to expand this knowledge.

Veli-Antti Leinonen is a Specialist at the Kajaani Data Center Program, CSC IT Center for Science in Finland

In order to secure the digital preservation in long term, the preservation MUST be ecologically on a solid foundation. Otherwise, the data can’t be preserved in the future if it consumes too much of earth’s resources. Non-sustainable preservation will eventually lead into data loss or intentional deletion of data. This is comparable to subject that organizations need to be on a sound foundation to assure the reliability, but from the environmental point of view. In addition to our data center operations, CSC provides national digital preservation services for both cultural heritage sector and research data in Finland, and acts as a national competence center for digital preservation. Having energy efficient data centers provides ecologically sustainable solutions especially when considering bit-level digital preservation.  

Dr Arif Shaon is Senior Digital Curation Specialist at the Qatar National Library.

Efficient long-term digital preservation requires a series of operations to be undertaken throughout the lifecycle of a digital object. The task of preparing content for preservation – i.e., a Submission Information Package (SIP)^[1] is a crucial step in the overall workflow as this is where the semantic and structural quality of both data and metadata is set for accessing and using the content in the future. The lower the quality of a SIP, the lower the longevity of the content being preserved.

For large collections of digital objects acquired from external institutions, the task of preparing SIPs can be very challenging. This is especially true where the policies for data and metadata quality of the acquiring organization cannot be easily aligned with those of the donor or contributing organizations.

Vera Ferreira is Depositing Officer for Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, BBAW in Lisbon, Portugal and Leonore Lukschy is Programme Administrator & Communications Officer for Organisation: Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, BBAW in Berlin, Germany

Homepage of the Archive of Languages and Cultures of Ethnic Groups of Thailand (https://langarchive-th.org)

Lee-Anne Raymond is Manager of MV Images (DAMS) at Museums Victoria, Australia

This year’s theme Breaking Down Barriers invokes imagery of protest marches, placards, actors suddenly bursting into song… Just me? Likely. Too much streaming in long lockdowns. Honestly, I really had to mull on the theme a bit, as I was concerned. How could I determine that barriers are being broken down from within a Museum where we do a lot of digitisation for reasons of physical preservation and access?

Julie McCormack is Senior Manager for Government Recordkeeping at Public Record Office Victoria, Australia

Public Record Office Victoria in Australia (PROV) is pleased to announce the completion of our Digital Archive Program, replacing our entire archival management and digital preservation environment that had been in place since 2005. This program represents a key initiative of our Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) to ensure continuous access to complete, authentic and meaningful digital records now and into the future.

Carey Garvie is Project Officer, Digital Archives Innovation and Research at the National Archives of Australia

After a hectic September of virtual conferences and opportunities to connect and share stories about how the National Archives of Australia does digital preservation with the broader community, I finally got a chance to sit back and start writing our blog for World Digital Preservation Day 2021 (WDPD2021). Reflecting on the theme of ‘Breaking Down Barriers’ and making digital preservation ‘understandable, relatable and accessible to all’, I began to think not about external community activities but internal ones instead.

Nick Thieberger works for the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and the University of Melbourne

The distance between major population centres in the Pacific makes it difficult for residents of the sea of islands to access records in their languages. Even if records are stored in national museums or cultural centres, that can be some distance from most of the population. As the internet becomes more widely available, connection to these records becomes more feasible, but that requires the records to be described, digitised, and made accessible.

Jaye Weatherburn, Program Manager Digital Preservation and Elise Bradshaw, Digital Curation and Archives Specialist work at the University of Melbourne

Supporting digital connections

The theme of this year’s World Digital Preservation Day, “Breaking Down Barriers” connects with some work we have currently underway to realise the University of Melbourne’s 10-year digital preservation strategy. This year in a big effort to build and support connections between the distributed teams contributing to the success of long-term digital preservation at the university, we have been working on a collaborative planning and implementation process for long-term preservation of university records.

Ros Malone is School Archivist for Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School in Perth, Australia

Image Keys: Easing Barriers to Retrieval in the School Archives

It’s a familiar problem for many Schools and School Archives, and indeed for collections of all kinds – what can be done with our vast collection of untitled, un-tagged digital images?