ULCC/Portico/DPC consortium to undertake JISC preservation study

· 29th October 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: DA Blog, Digitisation

JISC Digitisation ProjectsWe’ve just heard that a consortium of ULCC, Portico and the Digital Preservation Coalition has been awarded the contract by JISC to undertake a Preservation Study of recent digitisation activities.

The JISC Digitisation Programme has made a wide variety of valuable resources digitally accessible, including:

  • British Newspapers (1620-1900)
  • Newsfilm Online
  • First World War Poetry
  • Newspaper Cartoons
  • Welsh Periodicals
  • Pre Raphaelite drawings
  • East London Theatre Archive

More information about these, and other projects, is available on the JISC Digitisation web page.

The project will review the preservation plans and processes of the sixteen projects funded under Phase 2 of the JISC Digitisation Programme, and identify any medium or long-term access risks to the digitised content. It will also produce recommendations – for individual projects and for JISC as a whole – for processes and strategies to mitigate the risks, and case studies which would be helpful to the broader community.

This is an exciting opportunity for us to apply and extend the experience we have gained working on a range of projects in the field, including the European Visual Archive Market-validation Project (EVAMP) and risk assessments for the recently launched Newsfilm Online project. We will shortly be creating an online home to for the project collaboration and development, and will use DA Blog and the DigiPresSurvey Blog (on JISCInvolve) to keep you updated.

iPres2008 – first impressions

· 1st October 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: DA Blog, Digital Archives

iPres2008 finished yesterday, and overall it was a useful and informative event. It took place a mere 15 minutes walk from our current home, so we took advantage of its proximity and attended en masse.

Chris Rusbridge has already done an excellent job of some near-real-time reporting on the sessions, and I’m not going to try to replicate that level of detail in this post. As a first-time attendee at iPres, I was impressed by the professional mix attending, which took in hard-core computer science, digital preservation and curation folk, repository managers and those from the traditional custodial professions. In that respect it was very reminiscent of the early DLM-Forums, which were eye-opening for me when I attended the first one in 1996. But it was also interesting to observe that, just as DLM was dominated by archivists and records managers, iPres is a very library-oriented event. For example, those who expressed a desire for a Europe-wide event bringing together all those with an interest in digital preservation didn’t seem to be aware that the DLM-Forums existed.

One positive observation (of many) is that there is more reassuring news on the oft-vexed issue of IPR barriers to digital preservation. At the close of day 1, we heard a summary of the findings of the international survey on the impact of copyright law on digital preservation. More »

Significant Properties Workshop @ BL

· 8th April 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: DA Blog, Digital Archives

Neil Grindley and Chris Rusbridge kick off the Significant Properties Workshop

I don’t think I could begin to do justice in a few words to the wide-ranging debate at the JISC/BL/DPC Workshop on Significant Properties at the British Library on Monday: I’d rather leave it to others to analyse the significant outcomes in more detail, or to further discussions like the one started by Chris Rusbridge (our cucumber-cool chairman on the day) on the DCC Blog. Suffice it to say there was a sack of food for thought in all the presentations, and lots of opportunities to wonder “now why didn’t I think of that?”

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Digital Preservation Awards 2007

· 27th November 2007 · Write a comment · Categories: Digital Archives

The third digital preservation award was announced a few weeks ago at the conservation awards ceremony at the British Museum. As in previous years, there was a strong shortlist but TNA were deserving winners. 2007 conservation awards - winners, judges, uncle tom cobley, etc. The awards are sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition who held an event today to give the shortlisted entries a chance to promote themselves at more length to DPC members, and for members to ask questions. I chaired the morning session (the afternoon was devoted to some forward planning for the DPC) and it seemed to be an interesting and valuable exercise for all participants. If you weren’t there, you may still find the videos explaining the winning entries instructive, entertaining, or both.

I’ve been a judge for each of the awards and chaired the judging panel on this occasion; it’s been a fascinating and enjoyable experience and certainly makes one think again about what makes a project valuable to others. But we’re concerned that the awards might not be having the impact that they could be, More »

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