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Digital preservation professionals from the Southeast and across the globe convened at Vanderbilt University for the inaugural Digital Preservation Coalition Members Forum in the Americas. The gathering, hosted by the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, was held in person at Special Collections and University Archives, with participants also joining online.
The April 24–25 meeting supports the university’s goal of engaging a global community of scholars on campus and bringing their expertise to bear on the world’s most pressing problems.
“At Vanderbilt, preservation is central to our libraries’ mission. Our strategic plan calls for us to engage locally, regionally and globally in creating access, disseminating knowledge and preserving cultural memory,” University Librarian Jon Shaw said. “This event is a continuation of that journey—a gathering that reflects our values and goals, our shared belief in the importance of preserving the digital record for future generations.”
The event was designed to help those new to the digital preservation field build their professional networks and learn practical skills alongside more experienced practitioners, who shared their insights into the challenges of digital preservation at their own institutions.
Michael L. Nelson, professor of computer science at Old Dominion University, gave the keynote talk, “A Vision for Trustworthy Web Archiving.” He discussed the challenges of making functional and accurate copies of webpages for use in archives. These challenges include “link rot”—when the web addresses of online resources change frequently, making the information on those webpages unavailable—and “content drift”—when subject matter or salient points on a webpage change, altering the significance or meaning of that information. Nelson, who holds an appointment at the Virginia Modeling, Simulation and Analysis Center, is deputy director of ODU’s School of Data Science, chief scientist for the Office of Enterprise Research Initiatives, and co-director of the Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group.
Founded in 2002, the Digital Preservation Coalition is a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom that works with more than 170 global partners to facilitate long-term digital preservation solutions. Coalition members span Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Australasia and the Asia-Pacific, and the U.K. and Europe. The Heard Libraries, which joined the DPC in October 2023, are among only 14 organizations in the Americas that are full members, including the Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“The DPC is, first and foremost, a community,” said William Kilbride, executive director of the Digital Preservation Coalition. “Our role in this community is to bring people together to articulate good practices, to help with the development of a workforce that is flexible and responsive to changing digital preservation needs, to raise awareness and advocacy for digital preservation, and to celebrate success stories as well as raise concerns about things that go astray.”
To learn more, visit the DPC website.
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