iPRES and 02010

My Internet radar is starting to pick up some buzz about iPRES 2010. iPRES is an annual, international conference on “the preservation of digital objects” (see my previous iPRES gushing from when I was an intern).  The 2010 call for papers for the October 2010 meeting has been issued, and this year, there is also a call for leading workshops and tutorials for digital preservation activities.  This will surely lead to great opportunities to learn and share experiences and skill sets.

iPRES 2010 is being held in Vienna and is hosted by the Austrian National Library and the Technical University of Vienna.  I think the statement that this year’s organizers have made with their logo design is very apt for the conference subject matter.  It reads “iPRES 02010.”  Expressing the year in five digits instead of four is an excellent reminder that we are only existing at a particular place in time. As climactic as the year 2010 seemed to us on January 1st, it really isn’t any sort of finale.

Speak to a person involved in digital preservation, and they may be able to forecast what the next five years of digital information preservation management will look like.  Maybe.  The five-digit year expresses the future, and encourages thoughts about the people coming after us who will stand to benefit from our digital output.  Thinking that far ahead when talking about digital preservation is rather lofty, I know.  But it illustrates a pervasive point.

It is not likely that I will attend iPRES this year, so I’ve appeased myself by reliving some of the great presentations I saw last year in San Francisco.  The host of last year’s iPres, The California Digital Library, recently put up the proceedings of iPRES 2009 on their open access publishing platform, eScholarship.  The slides from the presentations have been available for a while on the website.

Here are some 2009 papers that have been influential in my own thinking since the conference:

• Maureen Pennock and Richard Davis: Archive Press: A Really Simple Solution to Archiving Blog Content, which inspired me to write a paper about blog preservation in general. (coming soon!)
• Emmanuelle Bernes and Louise Faudet: The Human Face of Digital Preservation: Organizational and Staff Challenges, and Initiatives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.  A really excellent reflective done by France’s national library, BnF, on their transition to a more digital existence and the implications for the library staff in terms of training and organization.
• Tyler Walters, Liz Bishoff, Emily B. Gore, Mark Jordan, and Thomas C. Wilson: Distributed Digital Preservation:: Technical, Sustainability, and Organizational Developments. This panel relayed their experiences in participating in private LOCKSS systems with geographically distributed institutions.  Really great for looking at benefits and challenges of joining a network versus going solo.  (Also, I’m taking a course from Tyler Walters this semester, which is an additional bonus.)

The entire proceedings are available here for free, individual downloading.

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iPRES

iPRES is an annual international conference on the Preservation of Digital Objects.  Current research and projects are presented by authors of papers that have been selected by a comprehensive review process.  The papers tend to focus on technological research and from authors’ experiences in implementing and practicing different preservation strategies.  iPRES 2009 marks the sixth year the conference has been happening, and it is taking place October 5-6th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA.  The California Digital Library is acting as this year’s host and is thus leading the internal conference planning and local preparations.

Last year’s conference was hosted by the British Library and was held in London.  Previous to that, iPRES 2007 was organized by the National Science and Technology Library of China and was held in Beijing.  More information about previous conferences can be found here.

iPRES 2009 has posted a two-track draft program, which reveals that David Kirsh and a panel from members of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access will give the keynote addresses.

Also of interest to this year’s conference is the string of related events that follow it.  These events are taking place in San Francisco as well, and might make for exciting ways for iPRES attendees to tack on a couple of extra days to their stay in the city.