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10^th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects 

I was fortunate to attend this conference a few weeks ago, and want to share the interesting things I learned. This was definitely an interesting experience! For starters, it was the first conference I’ve attended that was focused solely on the topic of digital preservation. It also was much more research-focused than many conferences I normally attend, which I found really refreshing. Another notable fact was the type of attendees – there was a mix of technologists and information specialists, but it did seem like many attendees represented large national libraries. While some archivists were present, I felt a lot of presentations approached preservation topics from a library, rather than archival, perspective. For example, in certain web archiving presentations, it seemed the focus was on preserving and presenting the information on a web page, rather than preserving the information in context and as evidence.

Some highlights from the presentations:

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As you’ve probably noticed, we recently rolled out a pretty major overhaul to DIMES. This post describes the changes that were made in some detail and also describes the reasons behind the changes.

A Next-Generation Archives Management System [SAA session 601]

This presentation mainly focused on the history of the ArchivesSpace project during its time as a Melon-funded venture. I’ve attached the presentation slides (note, slides no longer exist) if you’re interested in timelines and other details. Suffice it to say, the ArchivesSpace team has accomplished their goal of producing a solid 1.0 release, and the software is now moving into a community-funded phase. The RAC has joined as an ArchivesSpace charter member and will be able to partake in the benefits that membership affords, including access to documentation, a voice in development priorities, and early access to migration tools.

One of my favorite sessions at this year’s SAA conference was “Disruptive Components: Reimagining Archival Access Systems,” during which three archivists and one technical services librarian from Princeton spoke about their recent re-envisioning of an access system for archival description. This team was responsible for developing a new system which has been widely hyped in the archival community – and deservedly so – for setting the bar for the next generation of access systems. I was excited to hear what the panelists had to say about this project, and I was not disappointed.

SAA 2013 New Orleans

This was an extremely informative workshop led by Nancy McGovern, Head of Curation and Preservation Services at MIT and Helen Tibbo Alumni Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill in which concepts, principles, and practices for developing a digital curation program to effectively manage digital content were reviewed. This workshop highlighted issues of advocacy, preservation planning, and policy development necessary to manage digital content for the future.