Thanks to Emily Gore for posting this to the digistaes list yesterday; I think this will be helpful for all of us interesetd in digital preservation!

Authored by members of the MetaArchive Cooperative, A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation is the first of a series of volumes from the Educopia Institute describing successful collaborative strategies and articulating specific new models that may help cultural memory organizations work together for their mutual benefit.

This volume is devoted to the broad topic of distributed digital preservation, a still-emerging field of practice for the cultural memory arena. Replication and distribution hold out the promise of indefinite preservation of materials without degradation, but establishing effective organizational and technical processes to enable this form of digital preservation is daunting. Institutions need practical examples of how this task can be accomplished in manageable, low-cost ways.

This guide is written with a broad audience in mind that includes librarians, archivists, scholars, curators, technologists, lawyers, and administrators. Readers may use this guide to gain both a philosophical and practical understanding of the emerging field of distributed digital preservation, including how to establish or join a network.

Readers may access A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation as a freely downloadable pdf and/or as a print publication for purchase.

The MetaArchive Cooperative provides low-cost, high-impact preservation services to help ensure the long-term accessibility of the digital assets of universities, libraries, museums, and other cultural memory organizations. In addition to preserving members’ digital content in a distributed digital preservation network, the Cooperative also offers consulting and education services to institutions that seek training in digital preservation planning, policy creation, and implementation, including setting up and running Private LOCKSS Networks.

For more information, please contact Program Manager, Katherine Skinner katherine.skinner@metaarchive.org

BCR, LYRASIS and OCLC are proud to present this new workshop, partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The workshops will be held in Philadelphia: April 28-29, 2010; San Jose: August 3-4, 2010; and Chicago: November 16-17, 2010

Digital Preservation for Digital Collaboratives is a workshop designed to help digital collaboratives with existing digital collections develop and implement a long-term preservation option. The workshop, designed for multiple representatives from a collaborative, will provide the information and tools the collaborative needs to develop a long-term preservation plan that will work for the collaborative’s unique collections and organizations. Each workshop includes an initial day of online instruction followed by 2 days of in-person instruction. Additional support after the workshop will be provided to ensure that all participants are able to complete their preservation plans.

All workshops will be taught by a faculty of digital preservation experts:
Liz Bishoff, Director of Digital & Preservation Services, BCR
Priscilla Caplan, Assistant Director for Digital Library Services, Florida Center for Library Automation
Tom Clareson, Senior Consultant, LYRASIS
Robin Dale, Director of Digital Services, LYRASIS
Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute and Program Manager, MetaArchive Cooperative

More information

Perhaps like many libraries and cultural heritage organizations, you have been digitizing your resources, as well as acquiring objects that are already “born digital.”

Where do we go from here? How can we ensure that access to our valuable digital assets survives technological changes, obsolescence, and varying levels of funding?

It’s time to begin thinking about digital preservation. I highly recommend starting with this tutorial, Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems, which was created by Cornell University, and is currently maintained by the University of Michigan’s Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research department. The tutorial provides a comprehensive overview of digital preservation terminology, guidelines and models, preservation metadata, and bibliographic resources.

Another resource for learning about digital preservation is offered by DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE). This organization is currently developing animated YouTube videos that “encapsulate complex digital preservation issues and problems and explain them in a funny and easy to follow plot.*”

The first video, “Digital Preservation and Nuclear Disaster: An Animation” can be found here. Future animations will be available at this YouTube Channel.

Keep in mind that BCR is also offering an “Introduction to Digital Preservation” seminar on October 23, 2009. You can find more information here. We hope to see you there!

* May 11, 2009, DIGLIB listserv announcement from Emily Nimmo, Preservation Resources Officer with the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (Glasgow, Scotland).