Colleagues from OPF members KB National Library of the Netherlands (KBNL) and National Archives of the Netherlands, and of OPF’s partner organization Dutch Digital Heritage Network attended iPRES (ipres2024.pubpub.org) in Ghent in September. They share their highlights and insights*.

1: Is the cloud changing digital preservation?

In recent years we have been hearing the word “cloud” more and more. It is often seen as a cheap and sustainable way to store data. A more nuanced view is that “There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer”. Meanwhile, more and more preservation system vendors are moving to cloud storage. What does this mean for digital preservation?

The University of Illinois made the move from local storage to the cloud. Kyle Rimkus shared his experiences verifying the integrity of some 17 million files, also known as “file fixity”. He discussed the implications for digital preservation and highlighted the financial impact of each technical choice. Curious about Kyle’s findings? Read more about them here: https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/pub/d3akwsah/release/1. (Susanne van den Eijkel)

2: Greener digital preservation

For those interested in the challenges climate change poses to the long-term preservation of digital information, this edition of iPRES offered plenty of interesting insights. For example, CLOCKSS (https://clockss.org/) and the company DIMPACT (https://dimpact.org/about) showed how they calculate the CO2 impact of their global e-deposit services. This case study inspired many participants to also scrutinize their own preservation processes.

Another example came from the Finnish CSC – IT Centre for Science. They presented their model for calculating the carbon footprint of hardware in their award-winning iPRES poster: https://zenodo.org/records/13683021. The model assumes that servers have shared components whose carbon footprint has been reported by at least one supplier, so that it should be possible to calculate the carbon footprint of hardware even without specific data from manufacturers. (Tamara van Zwol)

3: New opportunities for old technology

Mimicking obsolete technology on new systems, or emulation, was a hot topic again this year. Emulation-related contributions even won awards, such as Margaret Black’s emulator for the Zenith Z-100, a 1982 PC: https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/pub/2f3vxteu/release/2. We hope to soon see this emulator in EaaSI (https://eaasi.info/) – my KB colleague and fellow OPF board member Jeffrey van der Hoeven and I introduced Margaret to EaasI’s Wendy Hagenmaier. EaaSI wants to expand internationally, and to get potential users excited, colorful EaaSI socks were handed out. (Remco van Veenendaal)

4: A changing audience at iPRES

This year, there was more room a iPRES for people without a technical background than ever before. The workshop “First steps into command line tools for preservation” and a tutorial on social media archiving are proof of this. This felt like a welcome and inclusive addition to iPRES. The iPRES community is all about knowledge sharing, with sessions on setting up communities, developing learning resources and even creating a skills development resource. (Lotte Wijsman)

5: Back to the future: what does the past tell us about the future?

As a field, digital preservation is now old enough to look back and learn from our past. For example, the National Library of France looked back at their 14-year-old digital collection (https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/pub/7vz1p6qr/), and the role of the institutional context of the past 30 years at the KBNL received attention (https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/pub/3xr324r3/). The NSDA presented a long-running study of storage trends for digital preservation over the past 10+ years (https://zenodo.org/records/13648690).

In her poster “Into the future,” Barbara Sierman gave the community a pat on the back for its work to date, but she also questioned whether the foundation laid is future-proof (https://zenodo.org/records/13642755). For example, how do we handle the sheer volume of data as we enter the “zettabyte era” (https://zenodo.org/records/13698003)? Do we need a registry for all those digital preservation registries we have developed in recent years? There was even a focus on the stress that carrying out this huge task can bring to the digital archivist (https://zenodo.org/records/13629614). (Marin Rappard)

6: Sharing openly and honestly from a human perspective

It is encouraging that we are sharing more and more openly and honestly what is not going so well in our daily work as preservationists, and where the human dimension and personal experience are increasingly central.

An example of this was the Birds of a Feather session “Reach out I’ll be there – the challenges of working in digital preservation and the impact on practitioner mental health and wellbeing” (https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/birds-of-a-feather). This closed session focused on the findings of the yet-to-be-published “Mental health and wellbeing in the digital preservation community survey report”. Participants openly and honestly shared their struggles and found recognition from each other. Ideas were exchanged on how they might make improvements in their daily work. These stories are also worth sharing and moving forward together. (Inge Hofsink)

7: Does an object retain meaning with only digital copies?

In digital preservation, the focus is often on preserving digital objects through time. We assume that if we ensure access to these objects, the content and meaning will also be preserved. But this year, that assumption was called into question.

A striking example was Claire Warnier’s keynote “Atlas of Lost Finds” about the fire at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro (https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/pub/4qa4nkxz/release/1). Many physical objects were lost, but digital versions, such as 3D scans, still exist.

Does that save the knowledge? Or does meaning only really emerge when the original community can use this data to reconstruct the objects through traditional techniques and materials? And even if the data is open access, can we really call it accessible if it requires expensive technology to reuse it? Food for thought. (Daniel Steinmeier)

* This is a translated and shortened version of a publication by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network: https://netwerkdigitaalerfgoed.nl/nieuws/van-cloud-klimaatbewustzijn-tot-menselijke-maat-7-trends-op-ipres-2024/.