Category Archives: News

iPres 2024 Announcement for Angela Dappert Memorial Award

The Angela Dappert Memorial recognizes outstanding work in digital preservation that has both strong theoretical underpinnings and a clear impact on practice.

You can find the official announcement of the 2024 award on the iPres2024 web site at: Angela Dappert Memorial 2024

The 2024 recipients are: Klaus Rechert (University of Applied Sciences Kehl); Dragan Espenschied (Rhizome); Rafael Gieschke (University of Freiburg) & Wendy Hagenmaier (Yale University Library).

They have chosen to donate the cash component of the award to LI-MA (Living Media Art) in Amsterdam.

Located in Amsterdam, LI-MA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, curation, and research of media and digital art. More than 3500 artworks are under their care, LI-MA’s exhibitions and conference programs have international impact. Unfortunately, LI-MA’s future is currently at risk due to funding cuts.

By donating our award, we aim to raise awareness of their situation. You can find more information here: https://li-ma.nl/article/li-ma-s-future-is-in-danger/

Video: The EU AI Act

This is the third in our video series on AI and Archives done in collaboration with the EU eArchiving Initiative. The EU AI Act is the world’s first comprehensive AI legislation. It has just come into force. What does it mean for us? Can I still build or deploy AI systems? Will the new regulations apply to services from outside of Europe? Are there any exemptions for research or open source? We look at these an other issues that confront anyone using or providing AI systems in Europe. We also take on upcoming changes that will, for the first time, mean that software and on-line services fall under product liability laws! All in the time it takes for a calming cup of tea.

Adam Farquhar, founder of Digital Lifecycle Management, discusses the new legislation and its impact.

2024 Angela Dappert Memorial Award Winners

The 2024 Angela Dappert Memorial Award in Digital Preservation has gone to Klaus Rechert, Dragan Espenschied, Rafael Gieschke, and Wendy Hagenmaier for the work reported in their iPres 2024 paper “Preserving Users’ Knowledge of Contemporary and Legacy Computer Systems.”

I felt that this paper signals a shift in the way that the digital preservation community is thinking about emulation technology as well as capturing knowledge about legacy computer systems and software. Emulation methods have become more common in long-term digital archiving environments. They make it possible to run and interact with legacy software and data that ran on machines that may be long since retired and difficult to find outside of a computing museum.

But as the people who knew how to use those systems become older and, sadly, rarer a new challenge emerges: How can we capture and preserve their knowledge of how to use these systems? Most of the approaches that people have explored looked at extensive manual documentation and video recordings. Rechart and his co-authors have taken a different approach. They record interaction events between a user and a system and then use large language models to reformulate and summarize these event records. This may make an enormous reduction in the cost of preserving this legacy information. I’m looking forward to their next steps as well as learning if these techniques for uncovering tacit knowledge apply in other areas.

I was able to present the award at the 2024 iPres conference in Ghent, Belgium.

Video: AI and Archives Part 2: Hazards

AI and Archives Part 2: Hazards

This is the second in our video series done in collaboration with the eArchving Initiative. Organisations, including archives, are driving ahead towards deploying AI-based systems. What hazards stand in our way? Adam Farquhar, founder of Digital Lifecycle Management, discusses some of the risks, including the new EU AI Act.

2024 Angela Dappert Memorial Award for Digital Preservation

We are delighted to be able to Angela Dappert Memorial Award for excellence in the theory and practice of digital preservation in 2024. The award is done in collaboration with the International Digital Preservation Conference, iPres. The 2024 iPres Conference will be held in Belgium on 16-20 September. I am looking forward to seeing the excellent papers short-listed by the iPres Programme Committee.

Angela Dappert

Digital Lifecycle Management Ltd to join eArchiving Initiative

We are looking towards joining the eArchiving initiative. It is taking the next step on a ten year journey to make it easier for organisations to preserve, migrate, reuse, and trust digital information over the long term. The team is developing software, tools, and standards that support interoperability across archiving systems. They are also providing a conformance specification and implementing tools to check system conformance. In addition to the web pages on the EC’s Digital Strategy site, there is additional information on the e-Ark Foundation site.

E-Ark logo

Digital Lifecycle Management Ltd to Join DLM Forum

DLM Forum logo

We are looking towards joining the DLM Forum. The Forum is a vibrant community of public archives and interested parties from across government, commercial, academic and voluntary sectors who are active in information governance, including archives, records, document and information lifecycle management. It was founded by the European Commission and first met in 1996. Today it is a not-for-profit foundation providing industry specifications, participating in activities and serving members from all over Europe and the rest of the world.