Five-Day Workshop: October 19-24, 2008

Workshop Goal

Promote Practical and Responsible Stewardship of Digital Assets

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is pleased to announce the continuation of the digital preservation training program developed at Cornell University. The expanded program, now maintained by ICPSR, is based on the Cornell curriculum is supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The program consists of an online tutorial and a one-week workshop to be held in Ann Arbor, MI, the home of ICPSR. ICPSR is the world's largest archive of social science data and is part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The primary goal of this program is to enable effective decision making for administrators who will be responsible for the longevity of digital objects in an age of technological uncertainty.

The Digital Preservation Management workshop series is intended for those who are contemplating or implementing digital preservation programs in libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions. The goals of this initiative are to foster critical thinking in a technological realm and to provide the means for exercising practical and responsible stewardship of digital assets.

Workshop Dates

Future workshops are scheduled for May 2009, October 2009, and May 2010.

Fee

The National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, is providing substantial support for this workshop series, enabling ICPSR to offer a reduced registration fee of $750. The fee includes lunches, morning and afternoon breaks, the Sunday evening reception and an evening dinner. Transportation and hotel accommodation expenses are not covered by this registration fee. However, there will be a block of rooms reserved at a local hotel for a rate of $89 to $99 per night.

Questions

Send questions and comments to the workshop organizers at digital-preservation@icpsr.umich.edu

Tutorial

The tutorial was made available to August workshop participants in June 2003 The tutorial was released to the public in fall 2003 and has undergone major revisions in the spring and fall of 2005. The tutorial has been translated into French and Italian, and has proved to be a useful prerequisite for the workshop attendees.

Content

Workshop attendees participate in an interactive process to develop digital preservation plans that incorporate technical, financial, organizational, and policy aspects encompassing the full life cycle of digital objects. The resulting organization-specific digital preservation plans stresses short-term risk reduction strategies while research and development goes forward in creating longer-term solutions that can be incorporated into the program framework. The workshop includes presentations, group discussions, labs, individual assignments, and a keynote presentation by an international expert in digital presentation.

Instructors

Nancy Y. McGovern, Digital Preservation Officer, ICPSR, University of Michigan

Aprille C. McKay, Digital Preservation Specialist, ICPSR, University of Michigan

Kari R. Smith, Head, History of Art Visual Resources Collections and Services, University of Michigan

Keynote speaker: Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, Cornell University

Issues to be covered include:

• program planning, management, and evaluation
• risk assessment
• cost benefit analysis
• legal issues
• the role of file formats, standards, and metadata
• storage and maintenance
• disaster planning
• the relationship between preservation and access
• preservation strategies, approaches, and methodologies
• technology forecasting