Category Archives: Digital Archives

Last fall I was able to attend iPRES, the International Conference on Digital Preservation. This was the 15^th time the conference has been held, and the first time it has been in North America since 2015. The 2018 conference was held in Boston from Sept. 12-16, 2018. Previously it was held in Kyoto;  the 2019 conference will be in Amsterdam.

Plenary Keynote speaker Eve Blau” Photo credit: Martha Stewart. (some rights reserved: CC BY-SA 2.0)

The conference brought together 421 attendees from thirty-two countries, including scientists, archivists, librarians, and other professionals from disciplines that have an interest in preserving digital information over long time spans. The interdisciplinary approach of iPRES is valuable in digital preservation. Digital preservation is not a problem unique to archives. An interdisciplinary approach lets smaller communities, such as archives, to find out more about how larger communities, often with better resources and larger research budgets, are addressing problems of a similar nature. Continue reading →

This past November I attended iPRES 2015. iPRES is one of the foremost international conferences on digital preservation, and the conference location rotates between North America, Europe, and Asia. iPRES 2015 was hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

UNC Chapel Hill, Louis Round Wilson Library, which houses the university’s archives and special collections. Source: Ildar Sagadejev, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

iPRES 2015 was a great opportunity to learn about recent developments in digital preservation research and practice, and to swap stories and ideas with fellow archivists as well as practitioners of many other stripes. The digital preservation community is highly varied and necessarily involves the expertise of multiple professions, and one of the most satisfying elements of my time at iPRES was the chance to look at familiar problems from new angles. Continue reading →