Shira here. This week Vicky and I have been in sunny San Diego to present at the annual Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group Meeting, or PASIG, hosted at UC San Diego’s Supercomputer Center. I’ll keep this post short since we’re still mid-conference and I’m writing this dispatch in between panels.
The Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego where PASIG 2015 was held
This is my first time attending PASIG and I’ve been extremely impressed both by the scope of the conference and by the quality of the presentations themselves. The conference bills itself as the, “premier practitioner-driven digital preservation event”, and so far the presentations have borne out this claim.
PASIG began on Wednesday with a panel entitled “Digital Preservation 101”. This was described as a series of presentations designed to drill into the nuts and bolts of digital preservation, with an eye to infrastructure services. My favorite of those presentation that afternoon was given by Nick Ruest of York University and Stephen Marks, University of Toronto entitled, “Preservation Policy for Humans”.
Vicky and I at the La Jolla Beach before the conference began
Their presentation highlighted York University’s impressive Digital Preservation Policy, which was interesting to me since it pertains directly to the work that I’m doing at Carnegie Hall: the Digital Preservation and Sustainability document that I’m currently in the midst of writing will contain a lot of the same kinds of information as the documents that they presented.
The second day of the conference was geared towards examining where we are as a community, with a special emphasis on highlighting practical issues and solutions. This panel was where Vicky and my presentation entered the mix. Our talk, entitled “NDSR-NY Notes from the Field: Preserving Born-Digital Objects at Carnegie Hall and Scientific Data at the American Museum of Natural History” had the dubious distinction of having one of the lengthiest titles at the conference. (Oops).
The La Jolla beach. Apparently this is what “winter” looks like in San Diego.
We began our presentation by talking about the NDSR program at large, and then each one of us gave a project update on the work we’re doing at our respective host institutions. Vicky’s half of the presentation focused on describing her survey methodology followed by giving everyone a preview of her preliminary findings.
Vicky and I presenting at PASIG 2015
My presentation began with a description of the kinds of digital content that I work with at Carnegie Hall, followed by an overview of all of the moving parts of my NDSR project. I also gave talked about the steps I’ve taken so far to tackle the scope of my project, and I wrapped up by providing an overview of where I am now and what remains to be done before the project wraps up in late May of this year.
The Geisel Library at UC San Diego, right around the corner from the Supercomputer Center.
Thursday evening was the conference’s formal dinner, which took place at the swanky UC San Diego Faculty Club.
The conference wraps up tomorrow evening, and after having attended this year I can safely say that I will make attendance at PASIG 2016 a priority (even if it isn’t in such a pleasant locale). It will be hard to leave the idyllic climate of San Diego for the barely thawed out East Coast, but alas… It was good while it lasted. Stay classy San Diego!
Celebratory post-presentation drinks.
