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Digital Preservation: World Digital Preservation Day

What is WDPD

World Digital Preservation Day (formerly known as International Digital Preservation Day) is an annual event hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition and occurs on the first Thursday of November. It is a chance to highlight the activities and practices that occur in digital preservation and share them as a community.

WDPD 2021

WDPD at VTUL!

November 4th, 2021

Test Your DigiPres Knowledge!

How much do you know about Digital Preservation? Test your knowledge with this Digital Preservation Trivia for a chance to win a $5 giftcard to Starbucks or Bollo's!

  • This is open-note, open book, but you only have one shot once you hit submit!
  • Questions include general knowledge, preservation at VTUL, and expert knowledge, plus a bonus round with write-in answers
  • Make sure to View your Score to see your chances and get feedback on each answer
  • The top 5 winners will be eligible for a prize
  • Winners will be notified by November 19th

Updates: Preservation at VTUL

  • We submitted an application of certification for the Virginia Tech Digital Libraries Platform to the CoreTrustSeal in August 2021! We are awaiting a response, and will release the details once we do!
  • We are working to ingest the data sets in the Virginia Tech Data Repository into our distributed digital preservation service the Academic Preservation Trust and hope to complete this by the end of 2021.

NDSA DigiPres 2021

WDPD 2021 falls on the same day as the National Digital Stewardship Alliance' Digital Preservation 2021 Conference! You can peruse the presentations here, and check back for links to the conference recordings that will be added once they are released!

 

From the Digital Preservation Coalition:

In 2021 the theme ’Breaking Down Barriers’ is an opportunity to demonstrate how digital preservation supports digital connections, unlocks potential and creates lasting value. And because digital preservation is so crucial in supporting these opportunities, it also points to a critical need to make digital preservation and community activities understandable, relatable and accessible to all.

 

WDPD 2020

Virginia Tech University Libraries will host a virtual event to celebrate WDPD 2020!

November 5th, 2020, 4:00pm-5:00pm ET 

View these lightning talks via VTechWorks or Kaltura!

This event featured:

  • A series of pre-recorded lightning talks on digital preservation-related topics and project highlights from University Libraries personnel (these will be streamed during the event and uploaded to VTechWorks)
  • An overview of preservation services at Virginia Tech University Libraries
  • Themed, punny signature drinks (see below!)
  • Time for discussion and socializing

Lightning Talks 

  • Shane Coleman, Data Curator: "Teaching Students the Value of Historical Maps"
  • Kira Dietz, Assistant Director, Special Collections and University Archives: "The History of Women at Virginia Tech: A Digital Tale of Access (and Preservation!)"
  • Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator: "Redlining Virginia Preservation Project"
  • Alex Kinnaman, Digital Preservation Coordinator: "CoreTrustSeal Repository Certification"
  • Luke Menzies, Digital Preservation Technologist: "Digital Preservation & Social Justice"
  • Wen Ng, Digital Collections Librarian: "Southwest Virginia Digital Archive"
  • Todd Ogle, Executive Director, ARIES: "Immersive Archaeology"
  • Maureen Saverot, 3D Imaging Specialist: "Photogrammetry & 3D Insects"
  • James Tuttle, Associate Director, Digital Libraries: "Digital Libraries Platform Preservation Strategy"

Accessibility

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please email library-event-accessibility-g@vt.edu during regular business hours at least 10 business days prior to the event.

From the Digital Preservation Coalition:

This year's WDPD theme is ‘Digits: for Good.’ World Digital Preservation Day 2020 is an opportunity to connect the digital preservation community and celebrate the positive impact digital preservation has, for good – or at least for as long as required. 

This year especially 'Digits: for Good’ refers to the hard work, resilience, and responsiveness of our colleagues which will enable research and development data used in finding a vaccine for COVID-19 to be preserved, shared and studied; it represents the fact that decision making in the management of the pandemic will be captured for future generations; and it describes the support which will be available to organisations around the world as they work to sustain themselves through this unprecedented time. It also goes beyond the pandemic, to all of the exciting and essential digital preservation work taking place right now!

WDPD 2020 Signature Cocktails

Signature SIPs for WDPD

Access your excitement for digital preservation with some of our signature SIPs (and very subtle digipres vocabulary puns)!

Need a break? Go to an OAIS-is with a blueberry basil gimlet

  • Syrup: 1c. Sugar, 1c water, 1/2c blueberries, 6 basil leaves
  • Drink: Double shot gin, ½ lemon juiced, 1oz syrup

Harken back to the Old-Fashioned Preservation Librarian

  • 2 oz. rye or bourbon, 2 dashes Angostura bitters, 1 sugar cube, splash of club soda

Celebrate Mai-TaiData (metadata)

  • 1 oz (2 tbs) dark rum, 1 oz (2 tbs) amber rum, 2 tbs fresh orange juice, 1/2 oz (1 tbs) Cointreau or triple sec, 1 tbs fresh lime juice, 1 tsp orgeat syrup* or 1 drop pure almond extract, 1 tsp superfine granulated sugar, dash of grenadine, Garnish: an orange slice

Find your chocolate fix[ity] with an MuD5lide checksum

  • 1 oz vodka, 1 oz coffee liqueur, 1 oz Baileys Irish Cream, 1 1/2 oz heavy cream, Garnish: chocolate shavings

Keep the storage Rule of 3 in mind with a 3-ingredient Sidecar

  • 1 1/2 oz cognac, 3/4 oz orange liqueur (Cointreau or Grand Marnier), 3/4 oz lemon juice, freshly squeezed, Garnish: orange twist, sugar rim

Do a sanity [Fixity] Check with a Bloody Mary

  • Zing Zang, celery salt, pepper, pickle spear, splash of pickle juice, and vodka (all to taste); garnish: celery stick, small shrimp, boiled egg, olives, all of the above

Need something more low-key? Dig into cold storage with a SHA-ndy or a Labatt Ice!

DigiPres Vocab

  • Access: access is assumed to mean continued, ongoing usability of a digital resource, retaining all qualities of authenticity, accuracy and functionality deemed to be essential for the purposes the digital material was created and/or acquired for
  • Cold storage: A resilient IT storage system consists of storage media contained within a server that provides built in resilience to various failure modes by using inbuilt redundancy and recovery
  • Fixity Check: a method for ensuring the integrity of a file and verifying it has not been altered or corrupted. During transfer, an archive may run a fixity check to ensure a transmitted file has not been altered en route. Within the archive, fixity checking is used to ensure that digital files have not been altered or corrupted. It is most often accomplished by computing checksums such as MD5, SHA1 or SHA256 for a file and comparing them to a stored value

  • MD5: a computer program that calculates and verifies 128-bit MD5 hashes, as described in RFC 1321. The MD5 hash functions as a compact digital fingerprint of a file. See Fixity Check

  • Metadata: Information which describes significant aspects of a resource. Most discussion to date has tended to emphasize metadata for the purposes of resource discovery. The emphasis in this Handbook is on what metadata are required successfully to manage and preserve digital materials over time and which will assist in ensuring essential contextual, historical, and technical information are preserved along with the digital object. The PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata has become a key de facto standard in digital preservation.
  • OAIS: An Archive, consisting of an organization, which may be part of a larger organization, of people and systems, that has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community. It meets a set of responsibilities, as defined in section 4 of the OAIS standard that allows an OAIS Archive to be distinguished from other uses of the term ‘Archive’. 
  • Preservation: Access to digital materials either for a defined period of time while use is predicted but which does not extend beyond the foreseeable future and/or until it becomes inaccessible because of changes in technology 
  • Rule of 3: Preservation storage requires geographic, distributed locations. It is recommended to store content in at least 3 locations; local, external, and in the cloud
  • SHA: (Secure Hash Algorithm 256) is a set of cryptographic hash functions used for fixity checks
  • SIP: Submission Information Package. An Information Package that is delivered by the Producer to the OAIS for use in the construction or update of one or more Archival Information Packages (AIPs) and/or the associated Descriptive Information (OAIS term).

See the Digital Preservation Coalition Handbook Glossary for more!

Related Events

See the DPC's Bit List of Digitally Endangered Species. "The DPC's 'Bit List' of Digitally Endangered Species is a crowd-sourcing exercise to discover which digital materials our community thinks are most at risk, as well as those which are relatively safe thanks to digital preservation." The Bit List is reviewed and new content is assessed annually. 

2020 Digital Preservation Awards is a ceremony of awards in digital preservation work held on World Digital Preservation Day by the DPC.

VTUL 2019 Events

Virginia Tech University Libraries will host several events to celebrate World Digital Preservation Day 2019.

  • November 5, 2019, 3:30pm - 5:00pm: Digital preservation personnel will join the hosts of the Library’s weekly radio show Stacks on Stacks on WUVT and talk about current digital preservation activities in the Library.
  • November 6, 2019, 10:30am - 12:00pm: Digital Preservation at Virginia Tech PDN session: This session is the final in the digital preservation series and focuses on the preservation services provided by University Libraries. This session will focus on informing stakeholders and faculty on how the Virginia Tech preservation services function and how lost or corrupted University content is retrieved. This session will also include language for writing storage and preservation information into grants and other proposals, and language to provide clients and stakeholders.
  • November 7, 2019, 3:30pm - 4:30pm: WDPD Lightning Talks & Reception (PDN):  Seven Virginia Tech University Library personnel from four different Library departments will present five-minute lightning talks covering various practical and unique topics on digital preservation. All of these digital preservation topics are activities and services are provided by Virginia Tech University Libraries. Enroll here! Speakers and topics include:
    • Alex Kinnaman, Digital Preservation Coordinator: Web Archiving 
    • Luke Menzies, Digital Preservation Technologist: Setting up Personal Archive Storage 
    • Jim Tuttle, Associate Director of Digital Libraries: Risk, Threats, and Mitigations 
    • Maureen Suess, 3D Texture Artist: 3D Photogrammetry 
    • Jon Petters, Data Management Consultant and Curation Services Coordinator: Data Management Planning 
    • Philip Young, Institutional Repository Manager: Perma.cc 
    • Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator: Documentation
  • Preceding and following the lightning talks from 3pm - 5pm is informal reception in Newman 207A on digital preservation at VTUL. The event will include:
    • "Preserved" refreshments
    • DigCurv: The Digital Curation Board Game
    • Themed door prizes

VTUL 2018 Events

Virginia Tech University Libraries has several events to share during the month of November to celebrate World Digital Preservation Day.

  • November 29, 2018: The Digital Preservation team will host an informal info session on digital preservation at Virginia Tech University Libraries. It will take place in Newman 207A from 2:30pm to 4pm ET. The event will include:
    • "Preserved" foodstuffs and other refreshments
    • Digital Preservation board games
    • Demos of current documentation and complex digital objects that we are digitally preserving
  • November 7, 2018: The Digital Preservation team is teaching an NLI session on Digital Preservation at Virginia Tech to provide faculty with resources on updated information to include in grants and other proposals and in communication with stakeholders.
  • November 6, 2018: The Digital Preservation team will be interviewed on the local WUVT radio station on digital preservation activities and updates.
  • October 29, 2018: Our Dean of University Libraries Tyler Walters was an interviewee contributing to a report from Ithaka S+R on "The State of Digital Preservation in 2018: A Snapshot of Challenges and Gaps" by Oya Y. Rieger. 

Fun Stuff

"All the Archiving Songs" is the official WDPD playlist created by the DPC

"Smells Like Digital Preservation"

A parody of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" created by the State Library of Queensland for WDPD 2019.