World Digital Preservation Day falls on the first Thursday of every November, and this year it will take place on Thursday, November 7, 2019. This celebration was first organized by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), an international advocacy organization, and it was quickly adopted across the globe by cultural heritage institutions actively involved in supporting the sustainability, integrity, and long-term accessibility of at-risk digital materials. The purpose of this annual observance is to engender greater awareness of digital preservation issues and their relevance to all aspects of society.
This year’s theme, outlined by the Digital Preservation Coalition, is At-Risk Digital Materials:
“Pervasive, changing and ubiquitous, digital technologies are a defining feature of our age. Digital materials are a core commodity for industry, commerce and government. They are fundamental for research, the law and medicine. The creative industries, cultural heritage and the media depend on reliable access to digital materials while families and friends extend and sustain their relationships through digital interactions. What better reasons to celebrate the opportunities created by digital preservation?!”
Harvard Library has been active in the digital preservation community for decades. Its own digital preservation repository, developed in 2000, was one of the first repositories in production at an academic institution in the United States. Nearly 20 years later, it preserves over 10 million digital scholarly objects comprised of 100 million files. And while the preservation repository is the cornerstone of Harvard Library’s Digital Preservation unit, the team supports multiple other aspects of digital stewardship, such as web and email archiving initiatives and format migrations.
In celebration of World Digital Preservation Day, the Digital Preservation unit will be hosting a “Scholarly Paper” Club conversation for interested Harvard Library staff on Thursday, November 7. They will be discussing the 2017 article published in D-Lib Magazine, “Trends in Digital Preservation Capacity and Practice: Results from the 2nd Bi-annual National Digital Stewardship Alliance Storage Survey.” It will be a brown-bag lunch, so staff are welcome to take bites while talking bytes.
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See also: Preservation
