Minding the Gaps:
Digital Preservation then
and now1
It is a privilege to be invited to contribute to this volume on digital preservation in
the Netherlands, not least because of the impressive impact that Dutch contributors
and projects have had over the years. This short paper will review the experience of
close neighbours at the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), identifying themes
and gaps from the history of the DPC, and proposing directions for the next decade.
In doing so, this paper contemplates common and distinctive challenges; and it
renews the longstanding invitation to collaborate, which is a defining characteristic
of the digital preservation community around the world.
A Secure Legacy?
In January 2018, the DPC published a new strategic plan.2 There is much to
commend this plan, establishing six interconnected programmes for the Coalition
and providing a mandate from the community on whose behalf the DPC operates.
It is not the purpose of this article to report or review that plan. Yet an easily
overlooked detail makes a significant statement about the shared challenges and
trajectories of digital preservation. The new plan sets out the DPC's mandate to
2022, the twentieth anniversary of our foundation. Therefore, hiding on the very
front page is a paradoxical complement and reproach that might well summarize the
experience of the global digital preservation community: its enduring commitment
to collaboration and the surprising obduracy of the problem it seeks to resolve.
This puzzle might be phrased in more personal terms: the DPC was first proposed
at a conference in 20003 which also heard from the KB about the NEDLIB project4.
I recall meeting a fellow archaeologist called Marcel Ras who had also found his way
into the emerging field of digital preservation. The younger version of myself, not to
mention the DPC's founders, would likely be astonished to know that almost twenty
years later the digital preservation challenge still persisted, and perhaps would not
perceive twenty years of the DPC to be something to celebrate. I certainly had a clear
expectation that the digital preservation challenge would be solved in a few years
and would have gone back to our day jobs. The question for my younger self and
Marcel's younger self then, perhaps as now, was when would we return to the more
familiar environment of archaeology?
Minding the gaps?
Digital preservation was very different in 2000 and, from that perspective, there's a
lot to celebrate. The DPC's earliest mission was to propose actions that would resolve
the problems that were evident. The findings of a needs assessment, published under
the title 'Mind the Gap', provided a roadmap of recommendations for the
community under eight broad headings which included 'growing awareness',
developing 'repositories for all', and the need for the emergence of a 'new
discipline'.5 Although there is a small but diverse body of literature about digital
preservation from the first decade of the century, this report is a good summary of
our expectations then and a useful benchmark for the progress we have made since.
It is surprising how fresh some of these recommendations seem more than a decade
later. For example, recommendation 5 speaks of the need for better tools 'to build
a business cases for the long-term preservation of digital materials', while
recommendation 11 calls for 'cross-disciplinary forums to allow both experienced
individuals and organisations to exchange digital preservation best practice'.6 Such
needs may be expressed differently today, but they remain true.
In other areas there is clear evidence of progress such as recommendation 10 that
calls for digital preservation to be embedded in the training of librarians and
archivists, and recommendation 17 which calls for more tools to perform digital
preservation activities.7 There has been significant expansion of professional
development and a transformation in the availability of tools and products. Thus,
there are reasons to be positive that we have indeed 'minded the gaps'.
These early years of digital preservation were also marked by a parallel and perhaps
less informed narrative that spoke to the consequences of data loss and the
dysfunction that could follow. Coming hard on the heels of the Millennium Bug,
gloomy predictions of a 'digital dark age' added urgency to our work.8 These
compelling and eye-catching accounts were useful for generating headlines but were
in many cases over-stated and, because they were overstated, may well have been
ultimately self-defeating. Typically, the 'digital dark age' narrative did not anticipate
the efforts of the digital preservation community and so it will never be evident
whether such predictions were always fanciful, or whether they suffered from the
'observer effect', in which the simple act of anticipating a phenomenon changes
its outcome.
william kilbride
1 I am grateful to Sara Day Thomson who reviewed this prior to release.
2 Digital Preservation Coalition 2018 A Secure Digital Legacy: The Digital Preservation Coalition 2018-2022
(2018) online at https://www.dpconline.org/docs/miscellaneous/about/175 5-dpc-strategic-plan-2018-22/
file last accessed 7/9/2018
3 Day, Michael 'Preservation 2000' in: Ariadne 26 (2001) online at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/
metadata/ last accessed 7/9/2018
4 van der Werf-Davelaar, Titia, 'Long-term Preservation of Electronic Publications, The NEDLIB project' in
DLib Magazine 5.9 (1999) online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september99/vanderwerf/09vanderwerf.html
last accessed 7/9/2018
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william kilbride minding the gaps: digital preservation then and now
5 Waller, Martin and Sharpe, Rob Mind the Gap: Assessing Digital Preservation Needs in the UK,
(Digital Preservation Coalition, 2006) online at: https://www.dpconline.org/docs/miscellaneous/
advocacy/340-mind-the-gap-assessing-digital-preservation-needs-in-the-uk/file last accessed 7/9/2018
6 Waller, Sharpe, Mind the Gap pp.36-37
7 Waller, Sharpe, Mind the Gap pp.37-38
8 e.g. Bergeron, Bryan Dark Ages II: When the digital data die, (Prentice Hall, 2001)
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