IT and Libraries: Conference “Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation” in Estonia

The “Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation” conference is opening May 23-25, 2011 in the National Library of Estonia, Tallinn, Estonia. The event developed out of a series of conversations between the Educopia Institute, the U.S. Library of Congress, the University of North Texas, Auburn University, the MetaArchive Cooperative, and the National Library of Estonia about the need for a forum where preservation programs from different national contexts can share information with each other for the purpose of building strategic international collaborations to support the preservation of our collective digital memory.

Participants of the conference will include leading professionals from national, public, academic, and special libraries, archives, and museums. Some of intended outcomes of the event include strategic alignment of national approaches to enable new forms of international collaboration; an action plan for building international collaboration among interested national digital preservation initiatives, with a view to forming an International Steering Committee for digital preservation; and an edited volume containing essays on six topical areas seeking to document action plans for collaboration-building activities. Its six main panel areas are organizational, technical, legal, educational, economic and standards alignment.