Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation
May 23, 2011

Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation Conference

05/23/2011 | National Library of Estonia | Tallinn, EE

The Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation conference developed out of a series of conversations between the Educopia Institute, the U.S. Library of Congress, the University of North Texas, Auburn University, the MetaArchive Cooperative, and the National Library of Estonia about the need for a forum where preservation programs from different national contexts can share information with each other for the purpose of building strategic international collaborations to support the preservation of our collective digital memory.

While there are many annual events that support and encourage information exchange across national boundaries, no event has yet attempted to set a strategic direction across the range of topics represented here: Organizational Alignment, Technical Alignment, Legal Alignment, Standards Alignment, Economic Alignment, and Education Alignment. This conference provided a participatory forum for information exchange and focused work on these topics.

Keynotes and Panel Chairs

  • Laura Campbell, U.S. Library of Congress
  • Gunnar Sahlin, National Library of Sweden
  • Inge Angevaare, Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation
  • Joy Davidson, HATII, University of Glasgow
  • Maurizio Lunghi, Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale
  • Adrienne Muir, Loughborough University
  • Raivo Ruusalepp, Tallinn University
  • Michael Seadle, Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Panel Speakers

  • Dwayne Buttler, University of Louisville
  • Sheila Corrall, University of Sheffield
  • George Coulbourne, U.S. Library of Congress
  • Costis Dallas, Panteion University Athens/University of Toronto iSchool
  • David Giaretta, Alliance for Permanent Access to the Records of Science
  • Neil Grindley, Joint Information Systems Committee – JISC
  • Martin Halbert, University of North Texas, Educopia Institute, MetaArchive
  • Wilma Mossink, SURFfoundation
  • Andreas Rauber, Technical University of Vienna
  • Mihkel Reial, National Library of Estonia
  • Adam Rusbridge, EDINA, University of Edinburgh
  • Sabine Schrimpf, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek/nestor
  • Bohdana Stoklasova, National Library of Czech Republic, Prague
  • Aaron Trehub, Auburn University, ADPNet
  • Bram van der Werf, Open Planets Foundation
  • Matthew Woollard, UK Data Archive

Intended Outcomes

  • Strategic alignment of national approaches to enable new forms of international collaboration
  • An action plan for building international collaboration among interested national digital preservation initiatives, with a view to forming an International Steering Committee for digital preservation
  • An edited volume that documents an action plan for collaboration-building activities between interested digital preservation initiatives in each of the topical areas (organizational, technical, legal, standards, economic, and education alignment)

Participants

This conference focused on aligning perspectives not just from many international locations, but also from different segments of the emerging digital preservation field. Participants included leading professionals from national, public, academic, and special libraries, archives, and museums, including:

  • Administrators
  • Information technologists
  • Content curators and managers
  • Policy-makers
  • Legal experts
  • E-publishers
  • Educators

Location

Tallinn is Estonia’s beautiful capital city, located on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki and west of Saint Petersburg. Estonia has a long history of support for libraries, archives, and museums. Tallinn has also been named the European Capital of Culture 2011.

Estonia numbers among the world’s most wired countries and serves as an emerging center for high-tech research and development. As WIRED magazine wrote in 2009, “The country is saturated in free Wi-Fi, cell phones can be used to pay for parking or buy lunch, and Skype is taking over the international phone business from its headquarters on the outskirts of Tallinn. In other words, Estonia–or eStonia, as some citizens prefer–is like a window into the future. Someday, the rest of the world will be as wired as this tiny Baltic nation.”