For the past year I have been working at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, involved with a two-year collaborative digital preservation project between Cambridge University Library and the Oxford Bodleian Libraries. This Digital Preservation at Oxford and Cambridge project (DPOC) project has been funded by the Polonsky Foundation. The project brings together six Fellows, with teams of three, mirrored at each institution. Three complimentary roles make up each team: Policy and Planning, Outreach and Training, and Technical, with the roles being filled by both British and international specialists, including Sarah Mason, formerly of the State Library of Victoria. In order to ensure a holistic approach to digital preservation, the roles have been based on Kenney and McGovern’s 2003 Three-Legged Stool Model for Digital Preservation[1] addressing organisational, resourcing and technological frameworks and infrastructures.
The project is looking at the digital preservation requirements of Cambridge and Oxford, and will produce a business case for digital preservation activities at each university, amongst a number of other outcomes that include digital preservation policy and strategy, a sustainability plan, a skills and training toolkit and requirements for the potential procurement of a digital preservation system. The Fellows regularly blog about their progress and are presenting our work in international conferences and around the UK.
So far, this has been a fantastic opportunity to gather a more in-depth perspective on international digital preservation and digital archiving practices and to build new networks in this space.
For further information on the DPOC project, and to read our blog posts, please see: http://www.dpoc.ac.uk/