February 5, 2009 -- The American Library Association Digital Preservation Interest Group met during the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver, Colorado. The Interest Group is co-chaired by Emily Gore of Clemson University Libraries and Becky Ryder of the University of Kentucky. The Group provides librarians from large and small institutions the opportunity to share and discuss plans and experiences in establishing digital preservation programs.
Lisa Schmidt from MATRIX (external link), a humanities research center at Michigan State University, described utilizing the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification Checklist (external link) to establish a preservation plan for the H-Net (external link) listserv files. H-Net is an international consortium of scholars and teachers working in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Among H-Net's most important activities is its sponsorship of over 100 listservs, the files of which have grown to over one million messages. The TRAC checklist was deemed by Schmidt to be flexible yet useful for improving preservation practices and policies for the H-Net listservs.
Abigail Potter from the Library of Congress gave a brief overview (PDF, 1.65MB) of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, highlighting its work in building a national network of preservation partners. NDIIPP partner Martin Halbert of Emory University and president of the MetaArchive Cooperative updated the group on the distributed digital preservation services available through MetaArchive. The MetaArchives allows libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions to preserve collections in a LOCKSS-software network at three different levels of membership.
Liz Bishoff provided a report of the iPres 2008:The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (external link) meeting and Emily Gore updated the group on the 4th Annual Digital Curation Centre Conference "Radical Sharing: Transforming Science? (external link)". Ongoing discussions on these and other digital preservation topics will take place on the ALA digipres listserv (external link).
