In November, our colleagues at the Digital Preservation Coalition presented their Digital Preservation 2014 awards. These awards, which are given every two years, were established in 2004 to help raise awareness about digital preservation.
The Library of Congress welcomes any public recognition of excellence in digital preservation. We, too, have given our own awards, most recently the Innovation Awards at our Digital Preservation 2012 (PDF), 2013 and 2014 (PDF) conferences. The Library’s awards tend to be limited to work done in the United States of America, as the DPC awards tend to be limited to work done in Western Europe; it’s built into the nature of the organizations.
We are happy to draw attention to the work at the DPC and I hope our communication with our international colleagues continues to expand so we can learn more about each other’s digital preservation work. Of course, not all great work is publicly recognized or rewarded. But when we have the opportunity to learn of others’ projects and results, it advances our collective digital preservation progress a bit.
This year, the DPC awards were divided into four categories:
- Open Preservation Foundation Award for Research and Innovation
- The NCDD Award for Teaching and Communications
- The DPC Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation
- The DPC Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy.
The Research and Innovation award emphasized real-world results and impact. The award went to bwFLA , who offer emulation as a service. The other nominees were:
- Jpylyzer, a JPEG2000 validator and extractor.
- The SPRUCE project, which supported grass-roots preservation activity by connecting digital data managers with technical experts.
The Teaching and Communication award applied to outreach, training and advocacy. The award went to Adrian Brown for his book, “Practical Digital Preservation: a how-to guide for organizations of any size.” The other nominees were:
- “Introduction to Digital Curation: An Open Online UCLeXtend Course,” by University College London.
- “Skilling the Information Professional,” Aberystwyth University Department of Information Studies.
The Most Distinguished Student Work was awarded to “Game Preservation in the UK,” by Alasdair Bachell of the University of Glasgow. The other nominees were:
- “Voices from a Disused Quarry,” an oral history of 40 years around a Welsh quarry, by Kerry Evans, Ann MacDonald and Sarah Vaughan, University of Aberystwyth and partners.
- “Emulation v. Format Conversion,” by Victoria Sloyan, University College London.
Safeguarding the Digital Legacy celebrates practical efforts to save important digital collections. The award went to the Carcanet Press Email Archive, which documents the preservation of 215,000 emails and 65,500 attachments, spanning a twelve-year period, along with full metadata. The other nominees were:
- “Inspiring Ireland,” by the Digital Repository of Ireland and Partners, an online exhibition of Irish cultural treasures.
- “Conservation and Re-enactment of Digital Art Ready Made,” by the University of Freiburg and Rhizome. In March 2014, the Library of Congress’s Trevor Owens interviewed Rhizome’s Dragan Espenschied for the Signal, and Butch Lazorchak interviewed Dirk von Suchodoletz of the University of Freiburg in 2012. Espenschied also gave a presentation at NDIIPP’s 2014 Digital Preservation meeting.
- “The Cloud and the Cow (Coalition of the Willing),” by the Archives and Records Council of Wales.
The complete video of the award ceremonies is online.