iPres 2008

The 5th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects took place at the British Library at the start of this week, as anyone who looked at the Guardian on Tuesday might have noticed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/internet.digitalmusic

It was a confident and very well organised conference and seemed to reflect the fact that the field of Digital Preservation is really beginning to articulate where and how it should position itself in the information management landscape. Even in comparison with December last year (at the Digital Curation conference in Washington D.C.), there seems to have been a shift in tone. Back then, it seemed as if a lot of the speakers were voicing concern that Digital Preservation was not only perceived as difficult by the wider community - but actually was difficult (even for preservation experts) - and there was no guarantee that solutions would be forthcoming! (I acknowledge that others may not have got the same impression from that conference but that’s how it seems to me now as I cast my mind back to it). 10 months later on however, there is much less talk about the general difficulty of it all … and much more focus on how to do it, how to collaborate, and how to sell the benefits more widely.

Admittedly, we were treated to a candid assessment at the end of the conference by a good-humoured but down-to-earth Steve Knight from the National Library of New Zealand, who felt he had to take issue with the determinedly upbeat theme of the conference “Joined Up and Working: Tools and Methods for Digital Preservation”, but nonetheless, an oversubscribed conference including delegates from 33 countries, featuring 66 speakers, in parallel sessions, attracting 6 different sponsors … would seem to indicate that even if things aren’t as ‘joined up and working’ as they might be - then it’s a pretty safe bet that with that level of enthusiasm from so many bright and inquisitive people, it soon will be!

One of the highlights for me was hearing Jose Carlos Ramalho (University of Minho, Portugal) describe the preservation solution that he and his colleagues had developed as part of the RODA and CRiB projects: a service oriented preservation approach to dealing with repository information using the concept of significant properties … ahhh, music to the ears! All up and running and being used by the Portuguese National Archives.

That’s not to say that others haven’t got ingenious functioning preservation solutions, but I was particularly impressed with Jose’s matter of factness and the briskness of his delivery. He made it all sound pretty straightforward - which makes a nice change and confers great credit on him, not only for making difficult things sound do-able … but also for sounding like he enjoys doing it.

Headline message from the conference - Don’t mention the ‘Preservation’ word! (it’s confusing and people worry about it) … it’s all about enabling future ACCESS to spectacular resources.

October 2, 2008 | Filed Under preservation | Author Neil Grindley 

Comments

One Response to “iPres 2008”

  1. Brian Kelly on October 3rd, 2008 8:10 am

    Hi Neil
    My brief comments on the conference (I was only there for the first morning) are available at:
    http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/ipres2008-preservation-conference-gets-featured-in-the-guardian/
    And further to the comments on the need to focus on access and use, you should note that my slides and a video of my talk are also available -for those who find talks given in the past an inpenetrable barier to access :-)

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