The Processing Foundation was founded in 2012 with the two-fold mission to promote software literacy within the visual arts, and visual literacy within technology-related fields. Our primary goal is to empower people of all interests and backgrounds to learn how to program, so as to facilitate a sophisticated way of thinking about and creating media at a time when such knowledge is crucial. We do this by developing and distributing a group of related software projects, which includes Processing (Java), p5.js (Javascript), and Processing.py (Python).

As part of our sustainability plans for the Europeana Sounds project, it was agreed that we would propose the creation of a Task Force of The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) which would continue promoting the aims and objectives of the project beyond the project’s lifetime.

Methods and Tools for Characterizing and Identifying Records in the Digital Age

In connection with TRACKS, PACKED vzw organizes a free workshop on sustainable digital preservation for artists and arts organizations. In preparation of the workshop, PACKED vzw started to make an overview of the iMAL archive with the help of a volunteer.

TRACKS-workshop (Bert Lemmens & Sanne Van Bellingen)

Libraries are at a crossroads when it comes to offering e-books. Major publishers have draconian policies where they sell books to libraries at a 500% markup or impose limitations have 26 checkouts before the library has to buy the book again. In a few short years libraries are spending double or triple the amount on digital and something needs to be done to convince the publishers to ease up. The only way libraries can be saved is throwing down with Amazon.

We’re starting to move the Digital Preservation Training Programme into the realms of the online. As a first step, we’re releasing a free OAIS online course aimed to help with the understanding of the OAIS Reference Model.

The content for this short course comes out of what we currently teach on the Beginner version of the DPTP face-to-face Course. Our plan is to move away from teaching OAIS in the classroom, and move towards students learning it online before they attend the teaching.

An invitation to review and reform the OAIS model from William Kilbride of the Digital Preservation Coalition:

Dear All,

It is my pleasure to invite you to participate in a new initiative that will hold our interest for a couple of years and which we aim to build into a platform for collaboration in the digital preservation community in the future.

The growth in the capacity of the research community to collect and distribute data presents huge opportunities. It is already transforming old methods of scientific research and permitting the creation of new ones. However, the exploitation of these opportunities depends upon more than computing power, storage, and network connectivity.

Group 47 in Woodland Hills, California, is working on ways to get around the fact that our drives and discs have a limited lifespan. Instead of writing 1s and 0s as magnetic signals, they write them as microscopic dots onto metal tape, using a laser in a system called DOTS. The tape is then stored in cartridges. A high resolution digital camera can read the data back, but all a future human would need to retrieve the image is knowledge of binary code and a microscope.

With digital preservation, and in particular the preservation of digital assets created by digitisation, very much a hot topic in the archives and libraries communities recently; we are being asked more and more frequently by clients which is the “best” image format to use.

Of course the answer is almost always “It depends on your project’s goals.”