Welcome to the Winter edition of the Open Preservation Foundation newsletter! In this issue, learn about what we've been working on, the OPF’s newest members, the latest software releases and a round-up of our most recent news, webinars, blogs and campaigns.

Software releases

November saw the first release candidate of jpylyzer 2.2, which is now available for community testing.

Major new features of this release included; support for High Throughput JPEG 2000 (HTJ2K) and its associated JPH file format, reporting and validation of rsiz property, additional codestream markers and reporting of warnings to the output file. It also introduces some API improvements. All output and extraction options can now be set directly as Python API parameters, which will be helpful for those who want to integrate Jpylyzer into their own Python projects. Take a look at the release notes for further details.

OPF Advisory Group (OAG) meeting

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the OPF Advisory Group meeting planned for December 6th had to be postponed.

Whilst we were disappointed at making this decision, we are now happy to announce that we have rescheduled this event for our members to 31st January 2024! We are looking forward to delivering updates about our projects, releases and plans, so keep an eye on your inbox for further information.
 

What we've been working on

‘What have we been working on this quarter’, you ask? Let’s hear from the team: 

Julie has been busy managing the team, investigating new tools, making financial changes to save money, working on our future strategy and talking to potential new members. She has also been participating in the E-Ark project.

Georgia has been hunkered down planning and drafting comms, upcoming content, and the OPF Advisory Group! The latter is a forum to update you on our work and give you a greater say on the development of our tools, special interest groups, and knowledge-sharing initiatives. At the request of some of our members, the theme of our 4th OAG will be ‘Looking Forward’.

Darren, as always, spends his time offering the OPF team integral systems support. Over the past quarter, he has been providing integral systems support to the OPF team. His responsibilities have included working on website developments, EARK, improving our analytics platform, and evaluating some possible new tools.

Helena has been working on all manner of comms and content, ideas and planning for the OAG and the End of Year Highlights alongside Georgia, keeping on top of marketing stats, as well as future plans for 2024. She has also been hard at work for EARK, looking after their communications and social media platforms, along with annual reporting and content planning. The recent eArchiving Summit event in Salamanca, on 25 October, was a huge success and their next training webinar will take place on 18 January.

Carl has been developing an OpenDocument Spreadsheet Validator as part of a collaborative project with the Danish National Archives, along with the National Archives of the Netherlands and the National Archives of Estonia. DNA has drafted a new specification highlighting archival risks for OpenDocument spreadsheets. You can review the draft Spreadsheet Preservation Specification here. The OPF has produced a validator for the OpenDocument format which can be viewed here. For more general information and queries, please see here.

Our new administrator, Amanda, has been doing lots of internal work for the OPF which should bring us brilliant new results. She has been supporting the Board, overseeing a website navigation project, finalising our new CRM system and consolidating our members information, and updating our very old HR handbook! 

The OPF Festive Calendar

Each December, in an attempt to bring attention to various achievements, and also deliver some fun resources, we run a Festive Calendar. Each working day we announce something enjoyable, an activity, or a release. 

So far, we have released a new community blog and a few fun games. We have also made a webinar available to the general community on our YouTube channel to include non-members in our festive spirit of giving. As we are only halfway through the month, follow us on X at @openpreserve to see what else we have to say this year! We have some great blogs, games and announcements coming up.

OPF's newest members

This quarter the OPF have welcomed not one, but two new members! 

Firstly, The National Library of the Czech Republic joined us this past year. The National Library (NL) is the biggest library in the Czech Republic, housing more than 7 million documents. The library operates two large digital libraries, National Digital Library and Manuscriptorium, that provide access to digitised modern documents and digitised manuscripts and early printed books and contain several hundreds of thousands of digital documents.

Our newest member, The National Library of Sweden, joined us in November. The mission of the National Library of Sweden is to collect, describe, preserve and make available everything that is published in Sweden. In collaboration with others, the Library also contributes to an open and efficient infrastructure for research.

We are thrilled to welcome another two national institutions to contribute their experience to the community and help steer our future tool development. We very much look forward to working alongside them both.

Webinar round-up

This quarter, we have hosted two webinars in October. The first was titled ‘The 87% Missing Report and Digital Preservation Advocacy’ by Kendra Albert, Clinical Instructor, Cyberlaw Clinic, Harvard Law School. Phil Salvador, Library Director, The Video Game History Foundation. James Newman, Senior Curator, National Videogame Museum and Research Professor in Media, Bath Spa University. During the webinar they discussed the report’s findings and the possibilities of using this research method and approach to advocate for both resourcing the preservation of, and shaping the law around, other types of at-risk digital and born-digital formats. This webinar is also now available to watch on our YouTube Channel.

In the second, ‘Turning Strategy into Action: Using a Toolbox of Activities for Community Sustainability Planning’, we heard from Laurie Arp of Lyrasis. Rob Cartolano from Columbia University,  Demian Katz of Villanova University and Rosalyn Metz from Emory University. This presentation shared the ITAV (It takes a village) framework and facets (Technology, Governance, Resources, and Community Engagement) and explained how the toolkit can be used to develop sustainability plans regardless of where a program sits within its life cycle.

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.

What’s new on the OPF community blog?

Our blogs and news items explore a range of topics from case studies and best practice to tools and project news.

In November, we saw a blog posted by Karin Bredenberg (Sydarkivera) and Micky Lindlar (TIB) titled ‘PREMIS - one year after receiving the award’. The blog follows the progress of the committee following the award last year.

Also in November, Jeffrey van der Hoeven (KB) and Remco van Veenendaal (NANeth) wrote a blog about the making of their World Digital Preservation Day 2023 parody of Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction. Employees of the KB National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and the National Archives of the Netherlands (NANeth) made the video to strengthen mutual ties, show their love for their job and simply, to have fun together! You can read the blog and watch the amazing video here!

In December, we had ‘A Reflection: Community Engagement in Digital Preservation’, written by our Community Officer, Georgia Moppett. In this blog, they reflect on the relationship between community engagement and the advancement of digital preservation since they started their role.

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.