Conference Presentations

Keynote Presentations

Day 1

  • Laura Campbell, Exploring What We Can Do Together: Strategic Alignments for International Collaboration. (PDF)

Day 2

  • Gunnar Sahlin, International and National Collaboration in the Digital Age. (PDF)

Panel Presentations

Technical Alignment

The Technical Panel, Chaired by Michael Seadle from Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, explored two key issues for national alignment: infrastructure and testing. Infrastructure includes the hardware and software necessary for managing digital archiving systems as well as the communication protocols for sharing resources across the internet. Testing involves reproducible experiments using, if possible, real data to show whether software and hardware perform under conditions that reflect a reasonable hypothesis about the future.

Organizational Alignment

The Organizational Panel, Chaired by Inge Angevaare from Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation, covered three sets of key issues. First of all, why is cooperation and collaboration so essential for dealing with digital preservation issues? This was followed by a review of types of cooperation and collaboration that have been developed around the world. Lastly, was a look at the enormous organizational challenge of securing long-term access to born-digital objects.

Standards Alignment

The Standards Panel, Chaired by Raivo Ruusalepp of Tallinn University, looked at collaboration opportunities in four key areas where standardisation already has a long-standing history of cooperation between different domains. First, metadata standards - their development and use across all stakeholders in digital preservation. Second technical standards – starting from the standardization of file format information to technical standards that should be adopted across the board of digital preservation tools and software. Third, approaching a standard for the digital preservation repository audit and how the current five separate approaches to repository audit compare with this. Finally, looking more specifically into information security issues in memory institutions and how these are approached in the light of cyber-defence measures. These four topics offered a wide range of areas for alignment and further collaboration that were explored in the break-out session.

Legal Alignment

The Legal Panel, Chaired by Adrienne Muir from Loughborough University, broadly covered legal and contractual issues associated with acquiring digital content for the purpose of long term preservation, copyright issues in digital preservation and contractual and governance issues in cooperative digital preservation. The implications of misalignment between approaches were identified as were examples where issues are being addressed in law and in practice.

Education Alignment

The Education Panel, Chaired by Joy Davidson from HATII, University of Glasgow, reviewed recent developments in embedding data management and curation skills in information technology, library and information science, and research-based postgraduate courses in various national contexts. The panel also investigated means of joining up formal education with professional development training opportunities more coherently. The potential of professional internships as a means of improving communication and understanding between disciplines was also explored. A key aim of this panel was to identify what level of complementarity is needed across various disciplines to most effectively and efficiently support the entire data curation lifecycle.

Economic Alignment

The Economics Panel, Chaired by Maurizio Lunghi of Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, aimed to lead a critical discussion of sustainable strategies in the preservation of cultural heritage. Specifically, this panel gave an overview of multi-institutional experiences and approaches in defining directive elements for efficient workflows in digital repositories management. Additional issues discussed included a clear definition of the objectives, and roles & responsibilities for the user community and service providers for the sake of establishing credible policy. As well as the choice of suitable business models, and cost analyses as essential components of a sustainable workflow for the life of digital repositories.

Closing Remarks & Synthesis

  • Cliff Lynch, transcript forthcoming.