The Digital Preservation Coalition has opened up for international membership.
The Digital Preservation Coalition has opened up for international membership.
Seeing the need for global co-operation and leadership, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will encourage and approve well-founded applications to join the Coalition as full or associate members from around the world from 1 August.
While the DPC has not previously encouraged membership from outside the UK and ROI, the Coalition has grown considerably in recent years. DPC is a practical manifestation of the fact that collaboration is the only sensible way to address the globally significant challenge of digital preservation. Outward-looking and established on a robust foundation, the DPC is now ready to accept members from around the world.
Registered in England and Wales, but founded by partners in the USA, UK and ROI, the DPC recognises the benefits of international collaboration and welcomes opportunities to work with anyone interested in helping meet the shared and challenging ambition of making ‘our digital memory accessible tomorrow’.
The Coalition celebrates relationships with cognate agencies in Germany (nestor), the Netherlands (NCDD) and the USA (National Digital Stewardship Alliance – NDSA). They continue to work with several other agencies to deliver sustainable open source solutions for digital preservation (Open Preservation Foundation – OPF), tools and standards for web archiving (International Internet Preservation Consortium – IIPC) and good practice in the management of social science data (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research – ICPSR).
The DPC has the following expectations for potential international members:
- Every agency with an interest in digital preservation, in any part of the world is encouraged to enter a dialogue with the DPC and will be welcome to apply for full or associate membership, with all the rights, access and responsibilities pertaining to that level of membership.
- The DPC define digital preservation to encompass all the topics and functions associated with ensuring our digital memory is accessible tomorrow, including ‘sustainability’, ‘curation’, ‘permanent access’, ‘digital continuity’ or other related concepts.
- The DPC is vendor neutral. Companies seeking digital preservation solutions are welcome to join. Companies offering digital preservation tools or services are welcome to participate in our work and support it, but not as members.
- Agencies in the US, Germany and the Netherlands not active in the UK and ROI are encouraged to engage with the DPC’s partner agencies in those countries (respectively NDSA, nestor and NCDD)
- Agencies with specific interests in sustainable software solutions for digital preservation or web archiving are encouraged to engage with the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) or the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) respectively.
- The DPC’s publications will be in the English but translation of key outputs will be considered where a clear need can be shown and funds permit.
- The DPC’s activities will continue to be based in the UK and RoI but will be supplemented with webcasting and teleconferencing and travel grants where appropriate.
- The DPC extend an open hand of friendship to support the development of a network of DPC-a-like organisations, seeking to encourage their development where possible.
As a member of the DPC, we at DRI highly value the expertise of its staff and are involved in many of its initiatives. DRI Director Dr Natalie Harrower said: "The Digital Preservation Coalition is an essential partner in global best practices in digital preservation. We are supportive of their internationalisation efforts as data is borderless, and the more cooperation at an international level, the better."
For more information, visit the DPC website.
