The University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) recently ran its award-winning Digital Preservation Training Programme and I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship from the Digital Preservation Coalition to attend. I joined delegates from a diverse range of organisations including the British Library and GlaxoSmithKline as well as attendees who had travelled from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and the Universite de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Aimed at professionals working in the varied field of digital preservation, the content and structure of the course was based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model for ingesting, storing and making accessible the content of digital archives.

The OAIS reference model

The programme provided detailed analysis of each of the steps involved, described the roles of different actors and gave an introduction to a number of invaluable digital preservation tools, approaches and assessment systems. As well as this, modules covered more general, but related, areas such as XML, metadata and costs and risk management.

As a relatively new member of staff at the University, for which digital preservation is an important process, I found my attendance on the course incredibly valuable. As well as improving my knowledge of the intellectual processes behind digital archiving activity, I was also able to apply this to real-life organisations through practical and group discussion activities: the final class assessment required delegates to analyse an existing archive, map its workflow to the OAIS model and undertake a gap analysis to see where improvements could be made.

I learned a lot by sharing experiences with other attendees and hearing how their institutions approached digital preservation. As a result, I now feel in a strong position to contribute to the University’s continued work in developing its digital preservation and digital asset management strategies.

Gavin Willshaw, Digital Curator