Digital Preservation Coalition

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is a UK-based non-profit that works with global partners to provide the necessary resources to educate various public and private entities on the best practices for long term digital preservation. Background The origins of the DPC are rooted in a 1995 workshop put on by the Joint Information Systems Committee and the British Library at the University of Warwick, focusing on how to approach the digital preservation. Internet usage was rapidly increasing, user expectations of digital resources were greater, and more users and institutions were seeking information across international borders in the late-20th century. The scholastic community at large was apprehensive to make a serious effort toward converting to digital systems without more permanent solutions to ensure the integrity and authenticity of electronic resources, due to the instability experienced in some U.S. government archives that was generated by physical decay of storage media and obsolete hardware and software. The 1995 workshop at the University of Warwick led to research into the various necessary elements of digital preservation, which concluded in 1999. Proposals for the DPC were published in D-lib magazine in February 2001, began operations in July of the same year, and officially launched at the House of Commons in February 2002. Mission and Activities The DPC was formed to bring together various public sector organizations to come up with a solution to the growing digital preservation issue as it was deemed too difficult for any one entity to achieve that goal on their own. Their goal was to create resources, tools, and standards to establish a universal approach to digital preservation. Even though the DPC was originally concerned with digital preservation in the UK, they acknowledged the fact that their concern over digital preservation was shared on a global scale. Instruction The resources, tools, and standards were not only created by the DPC to be applied at institutions with existing digital collections, but to teach anyone the fundamentals and best practices of digital preservation. Their primary resource for teaching the proper methods for digital preservation was originally called the Preservation Management of Digital Materials Handbook, compiled by Maggie Jones and Neil Beagrie in 2001, two former directors of the DPC.