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Welcome to the Autumn edition of the Open Preservation Foundation newsletter! In this issue, learn about our new software releases, our newest membership option and two new member benefits, the new JHOVE working group, iPRES, and a round-up of our latest news, webinars, and campaigns.
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Software Releases
August saw our first release of this quarter; JHOVE 1.30.1. This patch release fixes a PDF validation problem introduced in 1.30.
Also in August, we saw the release of ViPER 1.2. Major new features of this release included veraPDF 1.26, JHOVE 1.30.1 and DROID 6.7.0 upgrades to the ViPER toolset.
In September, the Arlington PDF Model Checker was released! Building on the great work done by the PDF Association supported by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), veraPDF has developed an open-source PDF checker based on the Arlington PDF Model. This application is separate from the veraPDF PDF/A and PDF/UA validator but comprises a very familiar package of GUI and command-line applications as well as a Docker-based REST API and online web demo.
Finally, the JHOVE 1.32 release candidate, released in August, was quickly followed by the full release of JHOVE 1.32 in September. This update contained a lot of changes, some of which being: improvements and bug fixes for error reporting in the PDF Module, the HTML module now correctly handles XHTML without the optional XML declaration and the TIFF module now reports TIFF strip tags correctly. To read about the other fixes in this release, visit our news page here.
Our current release schedule for our tools can be found on our website, here.
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OPF at iPRES 2024
We are thrilled to share that the OPF team recently attended iPRES2024, (which we once heard described as the mardi gras of the digital preservation sector). This conference brought together experts, innovators, and practitioners from around the world to explore cutting-edge developments in digital preservation.. This year, we were lucky enough to attend for the first time as an entire team - which offered a unique opportunity to exchange ideas, expand our learning, and meet with many of you!
There were several highlights of the event, too many to name - from the innovative keynote speeches to the live entertainment at the welcome dinner, we loved so much of the week! Amongst our team, we found the community approach to digital preservation emphasised through the outcomes of the workshops sparked great conversations about how well we overcome challenges as a sector. This year, we also had a table at the conference where we were able to meet many new people and were completely wiped out of merch (we hope you all enjoyed our screen cleaners and vintage Planets stickers!).
Beyond the opportunity to learn new things, the conference allowed us to engage with peers and new friends across various sectors, including academia, heritage institutions, and vendors. Networking has fostered new collaborations and strengthened our commitment to providing sustainable digital preservation support. A special shout out to our Marketing Officer, Helena, who stepped into an Editor in Chief role and spent the week navigating the Slack news feed with other iPRES organisers and gave all us attendees the information we could need throughout the week. As a team, we have returned inspired and equipped with actionable strategies that we plan to implement in our ongoing work efforts.
We look forward to integrating what we have learned to better serve our community and members. Stay tuned for more updates as we roll out new initiatives inspired from the past weeks!
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Our new membership tier -
IAM OPF
Our new 'Individual Associate Membership' option is tailored specifically to consultants and contractors.
As the field evolves, we believe that the specialised skills and dedication that individual contractors can bring to the table, make significant impact on the future of digital preservation. That is why we have introduced this new membership tier.
To find out more about the associated benefits and how to apply; please click here.
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What We've Been Working On
‘What have we been working on this quarter’, you ask? Let’s hear from the team:
Carl has spent most of the summer working on software projects. JHOVE has been the main focus, with two software releases, 1.30.1 and 1.32.0, both of which went out in the last quarter. Work has already begun on some changes to the PDF module for 1.34, which will be released in late October or early November. Carl has also continued the development of the ODF validator, adding support for validating different specification versions and dealing with extended conformance. The veraPDF Arlington software was also released officially. Carl helped develop the REST version of the Arlington software and updated the Docker images for command line and REST containers. September was taken up with preparation for the iPres presentations and attending iPres, where it was great to see so many familiar faces. Many for the first time in several years.
Darren has been working on various facets of our web presence. This has involved helping Georgia with the updated membership area on the website, and some further quality of life features for users. Some of which has been implemented already, and the rest are in the pipeline for release in the coming weeks and months. In response to the changes google has made to some of their services, we had to make changes to our backend data logging for Tools downloads, and so they have been working on improving how we collect our metrics. We also implemented our own link shortening service as Google has discontinued theirs. In keeping with the web theme this summer he has also been creating a version of the ViPER tool that can be run in a browser tab, so in the future potential users of the tool won't have to install Virtual Box on their PC to access ViPER.
Amanda has been spending the last couple of months working on the Capsule CRM, beginning to send out our letters for the new Membership Campaign and working with Georgia making plans for the coming six months or so. She also very much enjoyed her first iPres and meeting so many people.
In recent months, Helena has been busily making preparations for iPRES 2024, including attending regular meetings with the events organisers about all things newsfeed and communications! She has also been working on rolling out the new membership campaign with Georgia, working on our brand new membership option and associated benefits, continued work with the eArchiving Initiative, regular OPF communications and the new OPF Marketing and Social Media Strategy for 2024/25.
Georgia has been working with Darren throughout the summertime updating our website to enhance user experience and provide more relevant content, and contributing to OPF’s iPRES planning, ensuring valuable sessions and networking opportunities while attending. They have also been reviewing and refining member benefits to better meet the needs of our community, working with Helena to issue a member campaign to increase our engagement, and doing some future planning!
Julie has been working on fine tuning the IAM membership details, setting up the legal and fiscal requirements for us to work on the EOSC project next year (announcement will follow towards the end of the year), financial management of the OPF, preparations for iPRES 2024 and continuing eArchiving work. In addition, she has been working on the adoption of a new piece of software, which will be announced shortly.
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Join our new initiative, a JHOVE: Special Interest Group
We at the Open Preservation Foundation are excited to announce the formation of a new Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on JHOVE. This is THE chance for you to have your say in the future of the tool. This working group is aimed towards users (not just developers!) and aims to improve documentation, and understandability, enable the community to understand errors better, develop a searchable registry, improve the tool by identifying bugs, and generally help people get started easier.
To kick things off, we would like to invite you to an introductory meeting on October 1st, 14.00 CEST. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvc-Grrj0pHdXg0gpbpppV1uV3HtLL31mr.
Please note the group is open to everyone, OPF members and non-members alike.
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TWO New OPF Member Benefits
In July, we shared with you the exciting news that we have now launched a new member benefit!
At the OPF, we are in a fortunate position to have a dedicated Board of Directors, with over a century of digital preservation experience between them, who genuinely care about the outcomes of our work. The OPF staff keep the organisation ticking, and we are often closest to the needs and opinions of our members. Our Board of Directors are there to ensure that we meet expectations, deliver on our promises and align all that we do to our upcoming new strategy.
To facilitate closer ties and dialogue between our Board and our members, each of our member organisations have been assigned a ‘Board Buddy’. Hopefully, this can be an alternative way for our members to voice their opinions and suggestions, whilst also helping to strengthen the relationships between staff, the Board and our members.
In September, we announced that we were introducing Virtual Coffee Mornings for our members, dedicated to discussing all things digital preservation!
Held every quarter, the coffee mornings will be an excellent opportunity for networking, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving. Whether you’re interested in new technologies, meeting someone new, digital preservation strategies, or case studies from the field, we hope these sessions will be insightful.
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Webinar supporting the Call for Comments: Encoded Archival Functions (EAF)
The Functions Team of the Technical Committee for Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) is excited to announce a webinar to support the call for comments!
During the early summer TS-EAS released a white paper introducing EAF, a draft XML encoding standard based on the International Standard Description of Functions (ISDF) that can be incorporated into the EAS family of standards. The white paper describes the work of the subteam and its proposed encoding solution, along with a number of examples. The white paper also includes some context about the draft and its potential value to the international archival community, which fills an existing gap in the XML encoding standards landscape.
The call closes on October 20th, 2024. Two webinars have been held (with the same content) to accommodate different time zones around the world to give more information. Recordings of these webinars will be available soon.
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Webinar round-up
In late June, we heard from Amy Rudersdorf, Director of Consulting Operations at AVP, about ‘Preserving Digital Assets: A Gap in the DAM Marketplace’. This session addressed the critical challenges cultural heritage organisations encountered in managing and preserving digital assets effectively.
This month, Hannah Pomeroy and James Mould at the Royal Berkshire Archives, gave a webinar titled ‘From Digital Novices to a Digital Archive: A Preservica Case Study’. Like most institutions around the world, the Royal Berkshire Archives was faced with deciding how to store, catalogue and make accessible the digital material we were beginning to receive. This case study highlighted how they went from digital novices to having their digital archive online.
OPF members benefit from priority registration and exclusive access to our archive of webinar recordings. Any remaining places are made available to the community. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on X (formerly Twitter) to learn more.
Visit our events page to see more of our upcoming webinars. If you are interested in presenting your work to the community in an OPF webinar, please get in touch.
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What’s new on the OPF community blog?
Our blog explores a range of topics from case studies and best practices to tools and project news.
In July, our Community Officer, Georgia Moppett, wrote a blog entitled ‘Thistle do nicely: a part-team meeting in Scotland. It’s not often that we at the Open Preservation Foundation get to meet in person, so in July we made the decision to send a few staff members to meet one another in Edinburgh, Scotland. The ability to screen share is a modern workplace miracle, but there’s nothing quite like being able to wander over to a colleague and sort something out. Have a read about how it went, and why it was such a great opportunity for us, in their blog above.
The OPF blog is a great way to stay connected and share your work with a welcoming community of practitioners and policymakers from organisations at all stages of their digital preservation journeys. Sign up for a free account or contact us with any questions.
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With special thanks to our gold members.
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