By Judith Carr, Research Data Manager
The World has certainly changed since we had our pop-up exhibition of old tech on World Digital Preservation Day 2019.
In a joint exhibition organised by Special Collections and Archives, University of Liverpool Library, Liverpool Research Data and Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies, we gathered together examples of old technology that still held data but data that is now inaccessible, despite all technological advancements and living in the ‘digital age’.
As I recall it was a cold and blustery day, leaves being blown into the Sydney Jones Library foyer, but despite the weather we enjoyed showing students and staff our examples of old tech. The students marvelled at the weight and size of old laptops, the size of screens and floppy discs (it wasn’t that long ago surely!).
So now it is World Digital Preservation Day 2020 and of course there is no pop-up anything and some of us are working from home - our ‘digital age’ has enabled this.
I do not know the history behind the growth of libraries, but I know it took a long time for them to become public spaces and assets. For years, civilisations and individuals played their part in collecting and archiving parchments, early writings and books. However, as far as digital information is concerned we do not have the luxury of time. If we keep moving from one technology to another and do not engineer into new technology the ability to read older tech or preserve the data in some way, digital information that is important to our culture, knowledge base and economy will be lost.
This is why we should celebrate the University of Liverpool’s membership of the Digital Preservation Coalition and mark World Digital Preservation Day!
The Digital Preservation Coalition is a wonderful resource and a place to learn about how you can embed preservation into your processes and plans. Whether its learning about digital preservation on one of their courses or checking their 'Bit List' of Digitally Endangered Species to make sure you are using sustainable software, you can start your digital preservation journey on these webpages or even look at the processes involved in procuring a system.
This year’s theme is 'Digits: for Good’, a chance to celebrate the positive impact digital preservation has, for good – or at least for as long as required. This especially refers to the hard work, resilience, and responsiveness of our colleagues which will enable research and development data used in finding a vaccine for COVID-19 to be preserved, shared and studied.
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