Course description Digital preservation

 Course description “First Steps Towards Digital Preservation”
As more and more of our cultural heritage exists in digital form, we are faced with the
requirement of managing and preserving digitized or born-digital materials and of
making them accessible for future use. This workshop is intended as a primer in digital
preservation, understood as all the actions necessary to ensure that digital materials
are accessible, understandable, and authentic – now and in the future, despite
technical and cultural change.
Participants will be introduced to central digital preservation concepts and
terminology as well as instruments to use (e.g. policies, self-audit) to support the
process of shaping a reliable digital preservation service. The workshop has a strong
focus on organizational rather than technical questions and will in particular address
the following topics:
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What is digital preservation and why do we need it?
The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model
Policy documents for digital preservation
Licensing for preservation and re-use
Communicating with user communities
Trusted digital repositories
Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to explore their and their
organisation’s (actual or envisaged) role in digital preservation and the challenges they
are currently facing.
Target group
Archivists, repository staff, research data center staff, anyone responsible for
(planning) the curation and preservation of digital assets.
This course is for you
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if you work in an organisation or project planning to set up an archive or
repository for digital preservation,
or if your organisation already has established a repository or archive but has
not systematically considered aspects of digital preservation.
Learning objectives
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to gain an understanding of central concepts of digital preservation, as well as
their practical application in the context of running an archive or repository
to become familiar with the digital preservation workflow and policy
documents shaping it
to gain awareness of challenges in digital preservation and ways of addressing
them
to understand how different factors, such as the selection/acquisition process
and the targeted user communities, impact digital preservation.