International Digital Preservation Day

What’s that about then?

International Digital Preservation Day 30th November 2017 #IDPD2017

What’s that about then?

Digital Archivists are a much misunderstood lot.

A lot of people think our work on digital preservation must be something to do with digitising old documents but this is absolutely not the case.  Of course digitising old documents is fantastic and the wonderful resources which are now increasingly available on the internet like (and there are so many examples these are just some of my favourite ones) Charles Booth’s London or the Cambridge Digital Library . There are thousands and thousands useful for scholars, historians, students, teachers, genealogists, journalists – well just about anyone really who is interested in getting access to sources that would otherwise be near impossible to access.  Digitising archive and library content has revolutionised the way we access and interact with archives, manuscripts and special collections.

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Reflections on PASIG 2017

Christchurch, Oxford: my home for the conference

It was fantastic to see PASIG 2017 (Preservation and Archives Special Interest Group) come to Oxford this year which meant I had the privilege of attending this prestigious international conference in the beautiful surroundings of Oxford’s Natural History Museum.  All slides and presentations are available here.

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Researchers: what do they really think?

Image: Flickr https://flic.kr/p/8WpM2U – Rul Fernandes CC BY 2.0

Well… it’s probably quite hard to get to the truth of the matter but here at Lancaster we are trying to find out what researchers really think.  This is crucial for developing and improving our services and vital for delivering the service our researchers want.

We are one of the organisations taking part in the JISC RDM Shared Services pilot and you can read their take on the work being done here.  With JISC’s help we undertook a researcher survey to find out a bit more about the kinds of research data which were being produced, how the data were (or weren’t) being managed and researcher attitudes towards their data.

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Acting On Change: Pericles/DPC Conference and DPA Awards London 2016

DPA Awards 2016 nominees and judges (Image @SueCorrigall licence OGL)
DPA Awards 2016 nominees and judges (Image @SueCorrigall licence OGL)

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Pericles/DPC Conference: Acting on Change at the Wellcome Institute in London.  The theme of the conference was moving forward with digital preservation; in other words taking steps beyond just the technical tools and looking outward instead of inward.  There were excellent keynotes and panel sessions and useful and thought-provoking workshops.  PERICLES (Promoting and Enhancing Reuse of Information through the Content Lifecycle) is a EU funded four year project which seeks to address the issues of managing digital preservation in an ever changing world.

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