DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
Foundations for Digital Collections
April 22-24, 2025
| Description | Agenda | Faculty Bios | Registration | Logistics | Code of Conduct |
Join us for a comprehensive overview of digital preservation, presented by information professionals with deep experience in the preservation of cultural heritage materials. During three half-days of live, interactive, online training, you will learn foundational concepts, good practices, and practical strategies for managing digital collections, and you’ll gain confidence in decision-making for the preservation of your digital assets.
Topics include:
- key concepts and terminology in digital preservation
- building a digital project
- metadata
- copyright
- digital preservation tools
- special considerations for audiovisual and born-digital materials
- digital storage
- advocacy
The program will introduce you to free resources and tools you can use for digital preservation, and you’ll have the opportunity to connect via small group discussions with faculty members and with peers who face similar challenges. Participants will develop a clearer understanding of the next steps they should take to strengthen their organization’s digital preservation program.
What to Expect
- The number of registrants for Digital Directions is limited to 125 to ensure that each participant has opportunities to interact with faculty and attendees.
- Each livestreamed presentation is 45-60 minutes and is followed by 15-30 minutes of audio/video-enabled Q&A with the presenter.
- Registrants will have access to all presentation sessions during the conference as well as on-demand access to recordings of the sessions for three months afterward.
- See the Logistics page for more information about conference access.
Who Should Attend?
Are you just getting started in digitization and digital preservation? Trying to bring several digital projects together into a cohesive digital preservation program? Or are you well into a digital collections project and need a refresher on the latest standards and best practices?
Digital Directions is geared toward professionals and volunteers working with digital collections at small- to mid-sized archives, libraries, museums, historical organizations, government agencies, corporate archives, and other organizations that steward digital collections. Students are also welcome, and a discounted student registration rate is available.
Participant Comments from the June 2023 Digital Directions:
- A valuable and well-organized digital conference with knowledgeable presenters and actionable recommendations!
- This conference was amazing. For the first time since my boss first approached me about digitizing our collection, I finally feel like I know where to go from here.
- Really great conference! It was much more valuable than I anticipated. The break-out sessions were one of the primary reasons I signed up for the conference. It was great to have direct interaction with the presenters.
- The conference has pointed me towards the resources I will need to accomplish our goals to set up and begin our digital library collections. I wasn't sure if I was up to date in understanding the current landscape in digitization, but this conference affirmed to me that I already accurately understood the principles and what is involved.
- It was great to have an online conference that I could attend and, since it was recorded, I didn't worry about having to miss sections. A great resource and lots of knowledge that I can learn and utilize.
- Coming from a library with a small staff, we appreciate the high caliber presenters and information presented. We are in the early stages of organizing and launching our archives & digital preservation program and want to make sure that the steps we take now are setting us up for effective and efficient workflows in the future. The information presented will help us do that.
TO LEARN MORE about the Digital Directions program, view the Agenda for April 2025.
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