Robin Wright, Head Australasia and Asia-Pacific, Digital Preservation Coalition, presents at NDF23.

Abstract:

Digital preservation (DP) is the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials. The GLAM sector is addressing emergent challenges of media degradation, technical obsolescence and organizational change. But many tools, standards and principles of DP have emerged from ‘big science’ and the archive/library sector, among the earliest to face the challenges at scale. These solutions, however, have been criticized for embedding hegemonic and colonial assumptions that need to be understood and challenged. The question arises: is it possible to decolonize DP?

The DPC is a catalyst in the global response to this challenge. It develops and shares training, advocacy and good practice and a forum for collaboration. It is committed to its resources being inclusive and relevant, to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a policy of welcome and inclusion to ‘avoid cultural appropriation and advance the decolonialisation of digital preservation’. It is therefore imperative that DPC address the needs of underrepresented voices including First Nations cultures and communities.

This participatory presentation will invite the audience to share ideas about how DP practice can practically engage with communities with different needs around data and information sovereignties, centring community obligations within our emerging practice.