Digital Preservation Award

The 2005 Conservation Awards - Digital Preservation Award

The Digital Preservation Award of UKP5,000 is sponsored by the
Digital Preservation Coalition. This prestigious Award recognises
the many new initiatives being undertaken in the challenging field
of digital preservation. Shortlisted for the Digital Preservation
Award are:

    1.  Choosing the optimal digital preservation strategy
        Applicant: Vienna University of Technology

        The Vienna University of Technology recognises the
        difficulty in choosing a long-term preservation strategy,
        whether the material be digitised or born digital. It has
        developed a workflow evaluation tool to assist in the
        selection of an optimal preservation solution (eg.
        migration, emulation, or computer museum), thus enabling the
        user to make an informed, well documented and accountable
        decision for the implementation of a specific strategy for a
        given collection. Their approach has a wide application and
        has been successfully applied to video, audio and document
        records.

    2.  Digital Preservation Testbed
        Applicant: National Archives of the Netherlands

        The Digital Preservation Testbed project, developed by the
        Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands, is a practical
        research project to investigate options to secure long-term
        accessibility to archival records. The Archief carried out
        experiments based on series of solution-oriented research
        questions, in order to decide which preservation strategy or
        combination of strategies would be most suitable. The
        Testbed focused on three different methods for the long-term
        preservation of digital information, namely migration, XML
        and emulation. These methods are assessed not only in terms
        of their effectiveness, but also in terms of their
        limitations, cost and possibilities for use.  From June
        2005, the Testbed will operate as the Digital Preservation
        System of the Nationaal Archief.

    3.  PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies)
        Applicant: PREMIS Working Group

        Sponsored by the OCLC and RLG, PREMIS is an international
        working group set up to define a core set of preservation
        metadata elements, applicable to a broad range of digital
        preservation activities and  to identify and evaluate
        alternative strategies for encoding, storing, managing, and
        exchanging preservation metadata--in particular, the core
        metadata elements--within and across digital preservation
        systems. Its activities culminated in the release of a Data
        Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final Report of the
        PREMIS Working Group (May 2005). The Data Dictionary is a
        comprehensive guide to core metadata for supporting the
        long-term preservation of digital materials. PREMIS has made
        a vital contribution to the development of effective digital
        preservation solutions by creating and moving forward an
        international standard for preservation metadata.

    4.  Reverse Standards Conversion
        Applicant: British Broadcasting Corporation

        The recovery of significant early British colour television
        programmes by the BBC, which were degraded when they were
        converted to an American TV standard in the late 1960s and
        early 1970s. An innovative project that overcomes problems
        dealing with an obsolete video format, resulting in the
        digital conversion of some 80 programmes to broadcast
        quality, ensuring their preservation for future generations.

    5.  UK Web Archiving Consortium
        Applicant: The Consortium

        Six leading UK institutions, The British Library, the
        National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, JISC, the National
        Archives and the Wellcome Library, have formed the UK Web
        Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) to deliver a searchable archive
        of selected UK websites. This pioneering project addresses
        the lifecycle of websites from selection, through rights
        clearance and capture, to access by the public and long-term
        preservation. The collaborative venture went live at
        <URL:http://www.webarchive.org.uk/> on May 9th 2005.

Judging: All the shortlisted projects will give a presentation to
the Digital Preservation Awards judges in September. The members of
the 2005 judging panel are:

    Richard Boulderstone (Chair of the Judging Panel)
    Director, e-Strategy
    British Library

    Sheila Anderson
    Director, Arts and Humanities Data Service

    Kevin Ashley
    Head of the Digital Archives Department
    University of London Computer Centre

    David Dawson
    Head of the Digital Futures Team
    Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

    Hans Jansen
    Head of Research and Development Division
    National Library of the Netherlands

    Maggie Jones
    Executive Secretary
    Digital Preservation Coalition (sponsor of the Digital
    Preservation Award)

    Chris Rusbridge
    Director
    Digital Curation Centre

    David Seaman
    Executive Director
    Digital Library Federation

See <URL:http://www.consawards.ukic.org.uk/judges.html#dpa> for
further information on the judging panel.

Also announced this week are the:

    Student Conservator of the Year
    Anna Plowden Award for Research and Innovation

The winners of the Conservation Awards will be announced at the
British Museum on 22 November 2005.

The Digital Preservation Coalition sponsors the Digital Preservation
Award under the banner of the Conservation Awards, which are
supported by Sir Paul McCartney and managed in partnership by key
organisations in conservation,  restoration and preservation
management: the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the
UK Institute for Conservation (UKIC), English Heritage, the
Institute of Paper Conservation (IPC) and the National Preservation
Office. UKIC and IPC are in the process of merging with other
organisations during 2005 into a new larger professional body for
conservation of the cultural heritage, the Institute of
Conservation. The Anna Plowden Trust sponsors the Award for Research
and Innovation in Conservation.

The Digital Preservation Coalition was established in 2001 to foster
joint action to address the urgent challenges of securing the
preservation of digital resources in the UK and to work with others
internationally to secure our global digital memory and knowledge
base. For further information see <URL:http://www.dpconline.org/>

For further information on the Awards visit
<URL:http://www.consawards.ukic.org.uk/>


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:6
                   Distributed: Sunday, July 17, 2005
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