Editors' Note
This piece continues our series of Editors' Interviews that allow us to get current information on relevant programs, projects, and initiatives. The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is an innovative organization in the UK that resulted from the efforts of a group of determined professionals to coordinate and focus the digital preservation activities at both the national and international level. Maggie Jones is the Coordinator and Company Secretary of the DPC and has provided the following answers to questions we posed.

Could you provide some background on the DPC and its work?

Here's a bit of history. The concept of a coordinating mechanism was first proposed at a workshop held at the University of Warwick in 1999. During a review of progress since the first Warwick Workshop, held in 1995, one recommendation from the 1999 Workshop was to establish a coordinating body with representation from different sectors to promote awareness of digital preservation issues. It also proposed the establishment of a new position in the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to focus on digital preservation, as it was becoming increasingly clear that this could not be done in addition to other responsibilities. The JISC Digital Preservation Focus position was subsequently established, and Neil Beagrie took up that post in June 2000, with an early priority of setting up the organization recommended at the Warwick workshop. The DPC was formed following a summit in January 2001 with seven founding members and was subsequently incorporated as a company limited by guarantee in July 2002.

We've just had our first Annual General Meeting of the DPC, celebrating its first year of existence as a company. This provided an opportunity to review what has been achieved in the first year and also to look forward. The first Annual Report will be available from the DPC Web site in the near future. It indicates a strong advocacy and awareness-raising element. The DPC hired a PR consultant to help get digital preservation into the media and generally spread the word. This has been enormously successful, with twenty-five articles on digital preservation appearing in the national media during the DPC's first year of operation. DPC Forums have also proved to be a very effective means of disseminating information about what's happening, keeping DPC members and other interested parties well informed, and also providing opportunities for networking.

As we move forward, we want to build on this solid foundation but move away from general awareness raising to a more-targeted approach. For example, one focus for January-June 2004 will be drawing attention to the newly created Digital Preservation Award to recognize leadership and achievement in digital preservation. It is sponsored by the DPC and included as part of the Pilgrim Trust Conservation Awards. There are five worthy contenders shortlisted, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony at the British Library in June.

We also want to engage the attention of those who are in a position to fund the development of digital preservation infrastructure. One of the overarching objectives in the workplan is to get digital preservation on the agenda of key stakeholders in terms that they will find persuasive and understand.” The UK Needs Assessment, which we have just embarked on, will be a major means of achieving this over the next twelve to eignteen months. The first stage of the assessment was to survey all DPC members. This has yielded a wealth of information that we're still mining and will be used to assist in presenting the case for increased investment in digital preservation.

The survey also strongly reinforced the need for training in digital preservation. This will be an important component of future work. As a first stage, we're hoping for JISC funding of a report, which will investigate options and costs of developing an in-depth training program.

We keep our administrative stuff there—records of DPC Board meetings and so on. We also have a section of members documents, policies that DPC members have developed and have been prepared to share with others who might use them as models for their own organizations. A Technology Watch section contains references to relevant documents on standards and formats, and we recently commissioned three reports to add to this section. The intention of all of them is to present quite complex concepts and developments without recourse to unnecessary or confusing jargon. One is a joint DPC/OCLC report on OAIS, authored by Brian Lavoie, that will appear in the Members section of the site very soon. This is a great example of a development (OAIS) that is clearly so significant for the development of digital preservation infrastructure, but it can be a fairly intimidating document to read without the help of a user-friendly guide. This is what we hope the Technology Watch reports will provide. We'll also be looking at developing the Members section of the Web site further in the coming months.

There are three categories of membership at the moment: full members, associate members, and allied organizations. We're just embarking on a review of our membership structure, as it's timely to revisit the categories and to clarify the goals and benefits of membership. We expect the review to be completed in time for membership renewals in July.

The DPC operates both as an entity with a set of core activities and a work plan, and also through the individual activities of our members. This is crucially important, because our members include those organizations that have already taken on a leadership role in tackling digital preservation challenges, and we need to exploit that effort as much as possible. The recently conducted DPC survey revealed a wealth of information on member activity, and we're currently preparing a list of digital preservation projects being undertaken by DPC members.

Our primary stakeholders are our members, and we try to keep their differing needs and requirements firmly at the forefront of our activities. In addition, aside from the potential funders of digital preservation referred to above, we've been keen to ensure that we have formal relationships with similar organizations, for example, the National Preservation Office of the UK and Ireland, with whom we have a memorandum of understanding. Securing the preservation of digital resources in the UK and working with others internationally is another major goal for the DPC, and we've been determined to build and maintain contacts with organizations who are putting effort into digital preservation activities overseas. So we have an MOU with the National Library of Australia, and we're also developing a similar document with the Library of Congress's NDIIPP program.

We're also keen to forge a partnership with Cornell. We were enormously impressed by their online tutorial and workshop and would like to develop that model here. We've had some informal discussions to date, but it would be great to develop that further. We see the development of an intensive training program as requiring significant preparation and planning, so it won't necessarily achieve a rapid result, but we're convinced the end result will be well worth the wait.

The DPC is also represented on a number of task forces and working groups as a means of keeping in touch with colleagues working overseas and contributing to the overall progress toward common goals. The PREMIS Working Group and RLG/NARA Task Force on Certification of Digital Repositories are two examples of this effort.

The next DPC Forum, which will be held on June 23, 2004, at the British Library, is focussing on international digital preservation developments. It will be a great opportunity to hear about significant developments and consider ways we can most effectively work together.

Yes, it really seems to have tapped into a need, and we're very keen to develop the online version further. We've used the print Handbook as the basis for a series of training workshops we've done for DPC members. We'd like to see the online version developed further, and it might be possible to do this as part of our longer-term plans for more-intensive training programs.

I think this is an incredibly positive move for all concerned. The DPC can only benefit from having Neil in a liaison position between two major members of the DPC, and I expect to still be working very closely with him.

It's a little premature to predict any specific initiatives yet—Neil started in the role only in January! Neil's role in the BL/JISC position is wider than digital preservation, which is even better, I think, especially as the lines between digital preservation and other digital library activities increasingly blur. So having someone in that new role who knows and understands the working of the DPC as well as Neil does will be far likelier to open up opportunities for collaboration with the DPC.

The DPC has been entirely dependent on membership fees and, in particular, fees from our full members. This has provided necessary foundation funding and a build-up of reserves. It would also not have been established without the support of JISC, which has not only been a full member of the DPC from the beginning, but has also provided essential staffing support that enabled the DPC to make substantial progress until a permanent staffing base could be secured.

As the DPC program of work becomes more ambitious, we will also be seeking additional funds to help us achieve specific objectives. For example, Resource, the Council for Museums, Libraries, and Archives, is helping us bid for funding from the New Opportunities Fund for a survey of smaller regional organizations, many of whom will have been recipients of NOF digitization funding. This is an essential component of the UK Needs Assessment exercise we're undertaking—I'll come back to that later. We're also hoping to secure funding from JISC to prepare a report on training requirements and options.

You're talking to the DPC staffing! The new post of DPC coordinator was established in May 2003, and I took on that role, working very closely with Neil, who maintained his role as DPC company secretary until November 2003, when I felt able to take that on. We employ a webmaster on a consultancy and make good use of other consultancies to take our work forward. For example, the recently conducted survey of DPC members, which formed the first phase of our UK Assessment exercise, was undertaken by Duncan Simpson; and Michael Day, of UKOLN, collaborates with the NLA, on behalf of the DPC, to produce the quarterly issue of What's New in Digital Preservation? I've already mentioned the Technology Watch reports and the PR consultancy. We're trying to make the most effective, flexible use of our funding to get the best value from it, so we need to be a very lean organization.

The most effective enablers of our program have been the DPC members, in particular JISC, as I've indicated above, and also the DPC Board, who have been incredibly supportive and helped to guide the direction of the organization. The barriers have mainly to do with resources—there's a lot to do and a lot we need to do. But I've been grateful that there was already a work plan to guide me in selecting the most urgent priorities. I've made a New Year's resolution not to get stressed by what isn't being done, but to concentrate on what is achievable. As an Australian colleague was fond of saying, Concentrate on the doughnut, not on the hole!