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Charles Beagrie Ltd and the Digital Preservation Coalition are delighted to announce the release of the DPC members’ preview of the latest Technology Watch Report ‘Preserving Computer-Aided Design (CAD)’. This is the sixth report in the DPC technology watch series to have been commissioned with Charles Beagrie Ltd as series editors.

Written by Alex Ball, and published in association with Jisc’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and Charles Beagrie Ltd, this report provides a comprehensive overview of the development of CAD, the threat caused by its own innovative application and its vendors’ race to continuously upgrade; often leaving users with inaccessible versions and models.

A specialist in digital curation at the DCC and UKOLN at the University of Bath, Alex writes ‘CAD is an area of constant innovation…, resulting in CAD systems that are ephemeral and largely incompatible with each other.’ The report provides valuable insights into the key standards, techniques and technologies developed in an attempt to slow the seemingly inevitable obsolescence associated with native CAD formats.

The report is primarily aimed at those responsible for archives and repositories with CAD content, but will also appeal to creators of CAD content who want to make their models more amenable to preservation.

‘I’m delighted to welcome this report to the series,’ commented William Kilbride of the DPC. ‘Although CAD plans and drawings are limited to specialist domains they are typically complex to maintain and of very high value. Moreover, because they tend to relate to buildings, places or products with long lifecycles their preservation is a pressing issue. Alex’s contribution to the series is eagerly anticipated.’

The report is available as a preview to DPC members: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/844-preserving-cadpreviewapril2013

If you’re not yet a member of the DPC you can get a preview by joining at: http://www.dpconline.org/join-us

It will be released to the public in the second quarter of 2013.

Charles Beagrie Ltd and the Digital Preservation Coalition are delighted to announce the release of the DPC members’ preview of the latest Technology Watch Report ‘Web Archiving’. This is the fifth report in the DPC technology watch series to have been commissioned with Charles Beagrie Ltd as series editors.

‘The World Wide Web is a unique information resource of massive scale, explains Maureen Pennock the report’s author, ‘yet the lasting legacy of the web is at risk, threatened in part by the very speed at which it has become a success. Content is lost at an alarming rate, risking not just our digital cultural memory but also issues of organizational accountability.  In recognition of this threat, organizations have invested heavily in developing and implementing a range of web archiving solutions.’

‘This new report provides a state-of-the-art overview of the issues commonly faced and the technology in use.’

This report is aimed at anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of web archiving before they embark on a web archiving initiative. It will appeal mainly to organizations or individuals who are relatively new to web archiving, though existing practitioners will also find value in the way it surveys the entire landscape.

Neil Beagrie of Charles Beagrie Ltd welcomed the report, ‘The web is critical to so many business functions whilst so few agencies have a specific plan to preserve content that supports these functions. This report will be a considerable help to any organization that thinks its web content is of lasting value, especially those engaged in web archiving initiatives.  Because it includes options for procuring third party services it make web archiving available to all without an existing preservation infrastructure.’

William Kilbride of the DPC commented, ‘This is the fifth Technology Watch Report we’ve released in the last two years.  Previous titles have been very popular, including such topics as Preserving Email, Preserving Digital Sound and Vision, Intellectual Property Rights for Preservation and Digital Forensics.  Maureen Pennock’s concise, authoritative and informative contribution makes the series an increasingly important reference collection for anyone interested in securing a lasting digital legacy.  I’m very grateful to Maureen for her work and I am certain that readers will be too.’

The DPC Technology Watch Reports identify, delineate, monitor and address topics that have a major bearing on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow. They provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with ensuring a robust digital memory and they are of general interest to a wide and international audience with interests in computing, information management, collections management and technology. The reports are commissioned after consultation among DPC members about shared priorities and challenges; they are commissioned from experts; and they are thoroughly scrutinized by peers before being released. The authors are asked to provide reports that are informed, current, concise and balanced; that lower the barriers to participation in digital preservation; and that they are of wide utility. The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the dissemination of good practice in digital preservation.

The report is available as a preview to DPC members at: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/826-webarchivingpreviewmarch2013 (member login required)

If you’re not yet a member of the DPC you can get a preview by joining the DPC: http://www.dpconline.org/join-us

The report will be released to the general public in the second quarter of 2013.

Four reports have now been released in the new series of DPC Technology Watch titles and it is great to see the high-level of interest and praise they are gathering.

The Library of Congress voted the DPC Technology Watch reports into its “Top Ten Digital Preservation Developments of 2012”.

Individual reports have also been gathering praise for example Digital Forensics (see blog reviews by Jose Padilla in The Signal and Barbara Sierman in Digital Preservation Seeds) and IPR and Digital Preservation (see Current Cites January 2013 edited by Ray Tennant).

Part of the aim of the new series and adding DOIs for the reports and an ISSN for the series was to encourage more citations and reviews and to introduce the reports to a wider audience.

Although they are “e-only” and published electronically as PDFs, they are peer-reviewed, free to download and accessible to all. I hope we can encourage more editors of relevant professional print journals as well electronic media to consider reviews of e-titles in the DPC Technology Watch reports and bring them to the attention of the widest possible audience.

Additional new titles in the series to be released in 2013 include: Web-archiving; Preservation Metadata (2^nd edition); Preserving Computer-Aided Design (CAD); and Preservation, Trust and Continuing Access for e-journals.

Readers of the blog may be interested in three webinars on different aspects of Keeping Research Data and the Challenges of Decade Level Data Access and Security that are being made available by Arkivum, a company  specialising in long-term archiving. Each webinar is around 30 minutes in length and particularly focussed on researchers and institutions in the UK.  I will be contributing an independent view to the second of these webinars on 4^th February.

The opening webinar by Matthew Addis was on 14^th January but it is being re-run at 13:00 GMT on Thursday 24 January so there is a chance for people to catch it again.  You can sign up for it at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1414848611823277056 .

I listened in to that opening Webinar and thought it did a really good job of addressing the issues in a very even-handed way. It focussed on exploring the landscape of retention and access for research data in UK higher education institutions from Funding Bodies such as MRC and ESPRC, and what the drivers are from Library, IT and Research groups for keeping research data and the challenges of decade level data security. The webinar also incorporated a short element on how Arkivum’s solutions offer a way of keeping valuable research data safe, secure and accessible over extended timescales.

The second webinar at 1pm (GMT) on 4^th February involving myself and Matthew Addis will be on the topic of “Long-term data management: in-house or outsource”.

A third webinar in March will focus on the real costs of long-term archiving.

I have known Matthew for quite a few years and many readers may be aware of his work on digital preservation whilst at the University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre. He is now CTO at Arkivum.

We are pleased to announce the public release of ‘Digital Forensics and Preservation’ by Jeremy Leighton John– the latest in the popular DPC Technology Watch Report series.

‘Digital forensics is associated in many people’s minds primarily with criminal investigations’, explained the author, ‘but forensic methods have emerged as an essential source of tools and approaches for digital preservation, specifically for protecting and investigating evidence from the past.’

‘There are three basic principles in digital forensics: that the evidence is acquired without altering it; that this is demonstrably so; and that analysis is conducted in an accountable and repeatable way. Digital forensic processes, hardware and software have been designed to ensure compliance with these requirements.’

‘Forensic technologies allow archivists and curators to identify confidential content, establish a proper chain of custody, transfer data without changing it and detect forgeries and lost items. They can extract metadata and content, enable efficient indexing and searching, and facilitate the management of access.’

Cal Lee, an authority on digital forensics at the University of North Carolina welcomed the report. ‘Those who know Jeremy Leighton John’s work will not be surprised that he provides a great deal of food for thought in this report.  Jeremy has been a pioneer in the application of digital forensics to archival collections, and he has thought deeply about the implications of these activities.’

The report will be especially useful to those collecting and managing personal digital archives.  The diversity of objects and intricacy of their relationships make personal digital archives highly complex. Almost anything may appear in such an archive, from poet’s drafts, astronomer’s datasets, digital workings of mathematicians, and notes of political reformers. With their diverse content, organization and ancestry, personal digital archives are the epitome of unstructured information and serve as a test bed for refining preservation techniques more generally.

This is the fourth report in the DPC Technology Watch Series to have been commissioned with Charles Beagrie Ltd as series editors: recent titles have included Preserving Email, Preserving Digital Sound and Vision, and IPR for Digital Preservation.  Four more reports are in  development: Preservation, Trust and E-Journals; Preserving Computer Aided Design; Web Archiving; and Preservation Metadata.

The series editor has been supported by an Editorial Board drawn from DPC members and peer reviewers who have commented on the text prior to release.  The Editorial Board comprises William Kilbride (Chair), Neil Beagrie (Principal Investigator and Managing Editor for the series), Janet Delve (University of Portsmouth), Sarah Higgins (Archives and Records Association), Tim Keefe (Trinity College Dublin), Andrew McHugh (University of Glasgow), Dave Thompson (Wellcome Library).

The report is available online as a PDF file at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr12-03 .

We are now just over half-way through the project that commenced in February 2012 and will conclude in July 2013. We have successfully completed desk research and two surveys of ADS Users and Depositors respectively.

In November we held our community focus group and presentation of interim results at a workshop in York. The aims of the workshop were to seek stakeholder feedback on the emerging results, establish any change of perception of the ADS amongst participants as a result of the study, and seek their views on how the study results might be presented to the archaeological community and its funders.

Invitations were sent to a range of sector representatives and eleven delegates attended the workshop, of which four were from the Local Authority sector, three from National Authorities, one from Universities, one from the Commercial sector, one shared university/commercial sectors, and one from Publishing. It was an extremely valuable day and the feedback will help shape our final phase of dissemination of the study results and contribute to our final report.

We have recently made our project workshop presentation of interim/provisional findings from the study and our post-dissemination activity value perception report (a report of workshop participant feedback) available on the project webpage.

We are now working on the final weighting of the economic analysis with the aim of incorporating the latest results in presentations, posters and leaflets that can be presented and distributed at forthcoming events during 2013 including the International Digital Curation Conference, The World Archaeological Congress, and Computer Applications in Archaeology.

The Digital Preservation Awards ceremony was held on Monday in London. Although suffering from a heavy cold it proved to be a very enjoyable evening.

For me the big take-away message from the event was the importance of JISC’s role as a funder of innovative digital preservation services and projects in the UK. Two out of three of the award winners had been established by JISC: a remarkable testament to its effectiveness in this field over the last decade.

Below is a photograph from the ceremony. Further information and a press release on the Awards can be found on the DPC website.

Digital Preservation Awards 2012 Ceremony

The presentations from the Preservation & Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) conference in Dublin are now available online. This was one of the best digital preservation events I have attended in many years so I would encourage you all to take a look at the many excellent presentations. Topics included:
– digital preservation bootcamp
– storage trends and futures
– digital preservation research
– practitioners knowledge exchange, with case studies from

• – London School of Economics
• – UK Data Archive
• – LOTAR (Aerospace)
• – the National Library of New Zealand

– digital audiovisual preservation (organized by PrestoCentre)
– the costs of and cost models for digital preservation
– leveraging the cloud for digital preservation
– architecting for preservation at scale

We are pleased to announce that the Digital Preservation Coalition is offering its members a preview of the latest DPC Technology Watch Report ‘Digital Forensics and Preservation’ by Jeremy Leighton John of the British Library. This is the fourth report in the DPC technology watch series to have been commissioned with Charles Beagrie Ltd as series editors.

The report provides a broad overview of digital forensics with pointers to resources and tools that may benefit the preservation of digital cultural heritage. More specifically, the report focuses on the application of digital forensics to the curation of personal digital archives.

‘Digital forensics is associated in many people’s minds primarily with the investigation of crime. However, In recent years, digital forensics has also emerged as an essential source of tools and approaches for facilitating digital preservation, specifically for protecting and investigating evidence from the past,’ explained the author. ‘Institutional repositories and professionals with responsibilities for personal archives can benefit from using forensic tools and technique to address digital authenticity, accountability and accessibility.’

‘Forensic technology makes it possible to identify privacy issues, establish a chain of custody, employ write protection for capture and transfer of data, and detect forgeries. It can extract relevant metadata and content, it enables efficient indexing and searching, and it facilitates the management of access rights.’

Four more reports are in development – on Preservation, Trust and E-Journals; Preserving Computer Aided Design; Web Archiving; and Preservation Metadata.

The series editors have been supported by an Editorial Board drawn from DPC members and peer reviewers who have commented on the text prior to release. The Editorial Board comprises William Kilbride (Chair), Neil Beagrie (Principal Investigator and Managing Editor for the series), Janet Delve (University of Portsmouth), Sarah Higgins (Archives and Records Association), Tim Keefe (Trinity College Dublin), Andrew McHugh (University of Glasgow), and Dave Thompson (Wellcome Library).

The report is currently available as a preview for DPC members only and a login required. It will be available for general public release from the DPC website in Spring 2013.

The shortlist for the Digital Preservation Awards has been announced  this month  and we are very pleased that the work undertaken by the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) partners in disseminating tools and key learning from the KRDS research projects has been recognised.

The shortlist for an outstanding contribution to teaching and communication in digital preservation in the last 2 years is as follows :

• The Digital Preservation Training Programme, University of London Computing Centre
• The Signal, Library of Congress
• Keeping Research Data Safe Project, Charles Beagrie Ltd and partners
• Digital Archaeology Exhibition, Story Worldwide Ltd

Keeping Research Data Safe has been funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee and the work undertaken by Charles Beagrie Ltd in partnership with 10 UK organisations (the Archaeology Data Service, the University of London Computer Centre, the UK Data Archive, UKOLN/DCC at the University of Bath, and the universities of  Cambridge, King’s College London, Oxford, Southampton, and UCL) together with OCLC Research in the USA.

The winners of the Digital Preservation Awards will be announced on 3rd December.