Australasia Preserves - 2 Years On

Australasia Preserves is a digital preservation community of practice for Australia, New Zealand, and the Australasian region. It is a safe, fun, open, and welcoming community.

AusPreserves was founded after the VALA 2018 conference when a group of people from The University of Melbourne came together and thought about how a digital preservation community of practice could function on our side of the world while utilising and expanding our knowledge. All too often it can feel like you are on your own when it comes to digital preservation and having a group that you can ask questions of, or even just commiserate with, can be a huge help.

We have monthly meet-ups covering wide-ranging topics, from digital curation within the Indigenous Data Network, to what the landscape of digital preservation education looks like in Australasian Universities and the directions for continued development.
In 2019 we focused on the need for specific and technical digital preservation training and education and at IDCC 2019 we were lucky enough to be able to showcase our pilot Digital Preservation Carpentry Workshop. This workshop looks at workflows and ingest for information professionals, with a focus on the tool BagIt, and the methods by which this can be incorporated into existing procedures. This focus on training is one of the key aspects of AusPreserves as we aim to both provide opportunities and facilitate the creation of opportunities for developing digital preservation education and training for students and practitioners alike. As such, later in the year an Introduction to Automation for Archivists course was, developed and run by one of our members at his own behest. This course has been very well received by all who attended, and we have received many requests for online distribution.

In addition to our monthly meet-ups we have a vibrant online forum where our nearly 300 members ask questions, provide insight and feedback, discuss successes (and failures) and generally chat about all things digital preservation! Online platforms like Google groups and Twitter (#AusPreserves) have proved invaluable and make the distance between our far-flung members seem small, no mean feat when thinking about the size of our region! We have also been lucky enough to have some of our co-organisers and members present at conferences around the world, including IPRES and IDCC, and we hope to continue this tradition.

This poster showcases some of the work we have been doing on the other side of the world over the past two years. We hope it can inspire other people to join us, follow our progress, or even think about starting their own community of practice! Just remember - we will always have the best cakes.

Australasia Preserves – Digital Preservation is our jam.