The DPC press release announcing the availability of my paper on it’s website, was issued today. It’s contents are below:
‘Preservation Planning for Personal Digital Collections’ Case Note and Toolset by Paul Wilson is now available on the DPC website.
Paul Wilson, formerly of the Office Systems Division at The National Computing Centre, has contributed a new addition to the Case Notes now available on the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) website.
In this new Case Note, Paul narrates his attempts to create a preservation plan for a small personal collection. In the fuller article (which can be downloaded as a PDF), he outlines his experiences to provide insights into the practical outcomes of using published guidelines and tools for preservation planning. Since he could find no preservation planning process appropriate to individuals, Paul obtained a slide set detailing a simple preservation workflow from the Digital Preservation Coalition, and used that as a foundation on which to establish an approach to the work.
This general approach and accompanying documentation was tested and refined on two of his personal digital collections (one of 800 mementos and the other of 17,000 photos).
“I recounted my PDF experiences not to alert others to specifics about PDF (about which I know very little) or the eCopy software (which I am generally very pleased with),” he explains, “but to illustrate how complicated and time-consuming work on file formats can be.”
The detailed account of his research and preliminary trials provides a set of guidance for any individual or institution looking to preserve their own small, digital collection. Paul has also provided the documents he created from scoping to maintaining his collection, along with blank template versions that can be easily used and adapted by others. All of the documents, as well as blank templates, are available to download as a Toolset.
This case note also appears in the DPC’s Technology Watch Report Personal Digital Archiving by Gabriela Redwine
*Apologies for cross posting*
Sarah Middleton, Head of Communications and Advocacy, Digital Preservation Coalition, 37 Tanner Row, York, YO1 6WP