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“Data for All, for Good and for Ever”

“Data for All, for Good and for Ever” The iPres International Conference on Digital Preservation, first enacted at Beijing in 2004, was held in Glasgow in September 2022 for the eighteenth time and delivered a tremendous output on its subject. The heading “Data for all, for good and for ever” stood for the long-term conference aims: to preserve and make accessible all kinds of human artifacts for posterity. The types of material treated at this iPres were ebooks, epapers, moving images, photographs of museum items, 3D data, software (especially computer games), and websites. The most popular subject matters in the business sphere were diversity, education, standardisation, sustainability; in sum: federated action. In the technical field, discussed topics were metadata, emulation and, as a recent development, DNA storage.The Glasgow event was much larger than all iPres conferences before, with 437 delegates on site and 212 by online remote access. The COVID pandemic and the death of Queen Elisabeth of England on the eve of the first day influenced the conference, but did not impair it. In particular, the death of a monarch who had been present throughout the live of all visitors was a reminder of what long-term really means. The iPres 2022 Program Committee was about 50 percent larger than in previous years, broadening the path for younger and more diverse members. An impressive number of organizations and companies supported iPres financially, but the biggest workload was carried by its host, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), who celebrated their twentieth birthday in 2022.Fig. 1:The Bake Off, a playful iPres event seeking best solutions for diverse functional areas (photo: courtesy of the Digital Preservation Coalition)This short report only mentions some concrete subjects that the author thinks will appeal to the readers of this journal. Transfer and ingest of email into stable archival formats is becoming more feasible through open source tools like EPADD, RATOM and Pêle-mél, and R. Martinez reflected on the “right ways” to do this. A revision of the PREMIS rights entity enables more accurate rules for use of digital objects. Digital preservation registries, structuring and querying of preservation metadata were a big issue associated with the names of M. Day, F. Mackenzie, R. Spencer, T. J. Smyth, K. Thornton, T. van Zwol, and P. Wheatley. IT security issues were addressed by P. Stokes et al. and G. Hewitson. The experienced, now retired practitioner B. Sierman presented her plan to write a book on the professional history of digital preservation since 1990. A. Bell, P. Beneito Arias, and C. Sanchez gave insights into preservation of audiovisual collections. E. Genest reported on how the Canadian Centre for Architecture preserved computer aided design (CAD) files. G. Steward shed light on how the Scottish Cabinet’s records are transferred to National Records of Scotland, L. Faria explained appraisal and transfer from the archival information system of the Swedish customs authority. Preservation of datasets and databases was treated by D. Verhoff et al. and K. Naumann.Managers wanting to affect a rise in funding might want to look at the NDSA staffing survey of 2021 or at Nestor’s study on digital preservation networks. People stepping into large storage projects can consult the report on the EU ARCHIVER project or find out what Data Curation Network (US) members said in interviews. It is remarkable that a lot of the programmatic work in the past years was accomplished in alliance with the nuclear decommissioning industry (V. Joguin, J. Mitcham, and M. Popham). There might be more opportunities to engage the big industries, like automotive and others, into digital preservation issues. Last but not least, please consider reading the aspects of energy consumption and sustainability in the preservation business addressed by S. Gonzalez Monserrate, R. Gilesse, A. Kinnaman and N. Tallman.The Open Science Framework OSF hosts all parts of the iPres2022 proceedings, adding short persistent identifiers to every single resource: https://osf.io/8bczf/. The full proceedings are available here: https://www.dpconline.org/docs/miscellaneous/events/2022-events/2791-ipres-2022-proceedings/ (14.12.2022). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ABI-Technik de Gruyter

“Data for All, for Good and for Ever”

Naumann, Kai
ABI-Technik , Volume 43 (1): 2 – Feb 1, 2023
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de Gruyter
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© 2023 bei den Autorinnen und Autoren, publiziert von De Gruyter.
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2191-4664
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2191-4664
DOI
10.1515/abitech-2023-0007
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Abstract

The iPres International Conference on Digital Preservation, first enacted at Beijing in 2004, was held in Glasgow in September 2022 for the eighteenth time and delivered a tremendous output on its subject. The heading “Data for all, for good and for ever” stood for the long-term conference aims: to preserve and make accessible all kinds of human artifacts for posterity. The types of material treated at this iPres were ebooks, epapers, moving images, photographs of museum items, 3D data, software (especially computer games), and websites. The most popular subject matters in the business sphere were diversity, education, standardisation, sustainability; in sum: federated action. In the technical field, discussed topics were metadata, emulation and, as a recent development, DNA storage.The Glasgow event was much larger than all iPres conferences before, with 437 delegates on site and 212 by online remote access. The COVID pandemic and the death of Queen Elisabeth of England on the eve of the first day influenced the conference, but did not impair it. In particular, the death of a monarch who had been present throughout the live of all visitors was a reminder of what long-term really means. The iPres 2022 Program Committee was about 50 percent larger than in previous years, broadening the path for younger and more diverse members. An impressive number of organizations and companies supported iPres financially, but the biggest workload was carried by its host, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), who celebrated their twentieth birthday in 2022.Fig. 1:The Bake Off, a playful iPres event seeking best solutions for diverse functional areas (photo: courtesy of the Digital Preservation Coalition)This short report only mentions some concrete subjects that the author thinks will appeal to the readers of this journal. Transfer and ingest of email into stable archival formats is becoming more feasible through open source tools like EPADD, RATOM and Pêle-mél, and R. Martinez reflected on the “right ways” to do this. A revision of the PREMIS rights entity enables more accurate rules for use of digital objects. Digital preservation registries, structuring and querying of preservation metadata were a big issue associated with the names of M. Day, F. Mackenzie, R. Spencer, T. J. Smyth, K. Thornton, T. van Zwol, and P. Wheatley. IT security issues were addressed by P. Stokes et al. and G. Hewitson. The experienced, now retired practitioner B. Sierman presented her plan to write a book on the professional history of digital preservation since 1990. A. Bell, P. Beneito Arias, and C. Sanchez gave insights into preservation of audiovisual collections. E. Genest reported on how the Canadian Centre for Architecture preserved computer aided design (CAD) files. G. Steward shed light on how the Scottish Cabinet’s records are transferred to National Records of Scotland, L. Faria explained appraisal and transfer from the archival information system of the Swedish customs authority. Preservation of datasets and databases was treated by D. Verhoff et al. and K. Naumann.Managers wanting to affect a rise in funding might want to look at the NDSA staffing survey of 2021 or at Nestor’s study on digital preservation networks. People stepping into large storage projects can consult the report on the EU ARCHIVER project or find out what Data Curation Network (US) members said in interviews. It is remarkable that a lot of the programmatic work in the past years was accomplished in alliance with the nuclear decommissioning industry (V. Joguin, J. Mitcham, and M. Popham). There might be more opportunities to engage the big industries, like automotive and others, into digital preservation issues. Last but not least, please consider reading the aspects of energy consumption and sustainability in the preservation business addressed by S. Gonzalez Monserrate, R. Gilesse, A. Kinnaman and N. Tallman.The Open Science Framework OSF hosts all parts of the iPres2022 proceedings, adding short persistent identifiers to every single resource: https://osf.io/8bczf/. The full proceedings are available here: https://www.dpconline.org/docs/miscellaneous/events/2022-events/2791-ipres-2022-proceedings/ (14.12.2022).

Journal

ABI-Technik – de Gruyter

Published: Feb 1, 2023

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