Category: Digital Curation & Digital Preservation

The Library of Congress has released the The Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan.

Here's an excerpt:

In the digital age, new technology offers great promise for preservation initiatives. Transitioning to digital audio preservation, however, has created significant technical, organizational, and funding challenges for those institutions responsible for preserving recorded sound history for future generations.

The National Recording Preservation Plan has been devised to provide a blueprint to “implement a comprehensive national sound recording preservation program,†as mandated in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. . . .

The National Recording Preservation Plan’s recommendations for implementing a coordinated preservation effort fall into four interrelated categories: preservation infrastructure, preservation strategies, access challenges, and long-term national strategies for preservation and access.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (EPUB file, PDF file, paperback, and XHTML website; over 650 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

The Digital Preservation Coalition has announced the winners of the 2012 DCP Digital Preservation Awards.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Award for Teaching and Communications was presented by Oliver Morley, Chief Executive of the National Archives to a small team from the University of London Computer Centre who run the Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP)—an entry-level, introductory course that develops critical thinking about digital preservation. . . .

The Award for Research and Innovation was presented by Martyn Harrow, Chief Executive of JISC to the PLANETS project. PLANETS brought together memory institutions, small businesses, major technology providers, and research institutions from across Europe to build practical services and tools to help ensure long-term access to digital cultural and scientific assets. . . .

The DPC's most prestigious prize—the Decennial Prize—is awarded specially to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of the DPC and it recognizes the most outstanding work over the decade that the DPC has existed. An intense international competition followed and finalists from New York, Washington and London were selected after a painstaking assessment by an expert panel. But when Dame Lynne Brindley announced the winner this evening, it was the Archaeology Data Service at the University of York that came out on top. The Archaeology Data Service is an innovative group based in the Archaeology Department of the University of York.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

Martin J. Gengenbach A has self-archived his Master's theses "'The Way We Do It Here': Mapping Digital Forensics Workflows in Collecting Institutions."

Here's an excerpt:

The study presented in this paper used semi-structured interviews with archivists and curators to investigate the implementation of digital forensics practices for managing born-digital content in collecting institutions. . . . High-level workflow models based on the information gathered through those interviews provide additional documentation and context for archives and special collections seeking to develop their own processes

| Digital Curation Resource Guide | Digital Scholarship |

Joanna Barwick has self-archived her doctoral thesis, "Where Have All the Games Gone? An Exploratory Study of Digital Game Preservation," in the Loughborough University Institutional Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

Investigating the relationship of games to culture; reviewing current preservation activities and drawing conclusions about the value of digital games and the significance of their preservation were the study's objectives. These have been achieved through interviews with key stakeholders—the academic community, as potential users of collections; memory institutions, as potential keepers of collections; fan-based game preservation experts; and representatives from the games industry. In addition to this, case studies of key game preservation activities were explored.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

Joan E. Beaudoin has published "Context and Its Role in the Digital Preservation of Cultural Objects" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

In discussions surrounding digital preservation, context—those properties of an object related to its creation and preservation that make the object's origins, composition, and purpose clear—has been identified as a critical aspect of preservation metadata. Understanding a cultural object's context, in as much detail as possible, is necessary to the successful future use of that object, regardless of its form. The necessity of capturing data about the creation of digital resources and the technical details of the preservation process, has generally been agreed. Capturing many other contextual aspects—such as utility, history, curation, authenticity—that would certainly contribute to successful retrieval, assessment, management, access, and use of preserved digital content, has not been adequately addressed or codified. Recording these aspects of contextual information is especially important for physical objects that are digitally preserved, and thereby removed from their original setting. This paper investigates the various discussions in the literature surrounding contextual information, and then presents a framework which makes explicit the various dimensions of context which have been identified as useful for digital preservation efforts, and offers a way to ensure the capture those aspects of an object's context that are often missed.

|Digital Scholarship |