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The Library of Congress > Digital Preservation > News Archive > Sustaining a Digital Preservation Network to Resolve a Shared Challenge

October 27, 2010 -- Four digital preservation network organizations hosted a workshop on national initiatives during the 2010 iPres Conference (external link) in Vienna, Austria, on September 23, 2010.

Participants at the at the workshop "Greater Than the Sum of our Parts" during iPres 2010 in Vienna.

Participants at the at the workshop "Greater Than the Sum of our Parts" during iPres 2010 in Vienna.

"Greater than the sums of our parts? Collaboration, cooperation and grand challenges in digital preservation" (external link) served as a platform to discuss shared challenges, models for success and ideas for improving collaboration and digital preservation programs within and across boarders.  

Hosting organizations included the Digital Preservation Coalition (external link) from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation (external link), Germany’s nestor (external link) and the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program from the U.S.

Representatives from Sweden, Finland, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, the Open Planets Foundation (external link) and NDIIPP partners Data-PASS (external link) and Educopia Institute (external link) shared the goals, structure and outcomes of their multi-intuitional digital preservation efforts. Several other collaborating initiatives also participated.

Much of the discussion revolved around how to share knowledge and expertise and how to motivate collaboration. Questions arose on how to coordinate efforts internationally and how to support international digital preservation resources.

The full workshop report (external link) (PDF) and presentations (external link) are now available.

Follow up workshops were proposed for iPres 2011 (external link), which will be held in Tsukuba, Japan. The conversation will also be continued at the recently announced conference Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation (external link) May 23-25, 2011, hosted by the Educopia Institute and the Library of Congress.