Course description “First Steps Towards Digital Preservation” As more and more of our cultural heritage exists in digital form, we are faced with the requirement of managing and preserving digitized or born-digital materials and of making them accessible for future use. This workshop is intended as a primer in digital preservation, understood as all the actions necessary to ensure that digital materials are accessible, understandable, and authentic – now and in the future, despite technical and cultural change. Participants will be introduced to central digital preservation concepts and terminology as well as instruments to use (e.g. policies, self-audit) to support the process of shaping a reliable digital preservation service. The workshop has a strong focus on organizational rather than technical questions and will in particular address the following topics: • • • • • • What is digital preservation and why do we need it? The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model Policy documents for digital preservation Licensing for preservation and re-use Communicating with user communities Trusted digital repositories Throughout the workshop, participants will be encouraged to explore their and their organisation’s (actual or envisaged) role in digital preservation and the challenges they are currently facing. Target group Archivists, repository staff, research data center staff, anyone responsible for (planning) the curation and preservation of digital assets. This course is for you • • if you work in an organisation or project planning to set up an archive or repository for digital preservation, or if your organisation already has established a repository or archive but has not systematically considered aspects of digital preservation. Learning objectives • • • • to gain an understanding of central concepts of digital preservation, as well as their practical application in the context of running an archive or repository to become familiar with the digital preservation workflow and policy documents shaping it to gain awareness of challenges in digital preservation and ways of addressing them to understand how different factors, such as the selection/acquisition process and the targeted user communities, impact digital preservation.