Alone Together: On Missing the iPres Community  

Welcome to the iPRES 2021 Why I iPres series： We have invited members of the digital preservation community to publish their experience and thoughts related to iPRES. This post is written by Dr. Trevor Owens,  the first Head of Digital Content Management at the U.S. Library of Congress, who is also the Papers and Panels Co-Chair for iPRES 2021. 

Trevor Owens

Dr. Trevor Owens is a librarian, researcher, policy maker, and educator advancing digital infrastructure and programs for libraries, archives, museums, and related cultural institutions. Owens serves as the first Head of Digital Content Management at the U.S. Library of Congress. He is also a Public Historian in Residence at American University, and a lecturer for the University of Maryland’s College of Information.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorowens/

Among other things, I was really looking forward to being at iPres 2020 in Beijing. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate iPres as the unique event it is. There isn’t another event like it that brings together folks from around the world dedicated to working together to ensure enduring access to digital content. I’ve learned so much from discussions about open source software at iPres. It’s a unique place to connect with colleagues at national libraries working on managing eBooks. Where else could you get into extended discussions about file extensions? While there are a range of international conferences that touch on digital preservation issues, iPres remains unique in it’s crosscutting exploration of issues of practice, theory, and research in the international digital preservation community.

With everything going on in our world, one might rightly claim that there are bigger, more important things to be concerned with than missing a conference. I agree. The whole world over, our friends, families, and communities are straining to make sense of the state of things. As we grapple with the challenges of a daunting global pandemic, we also remain acutely aware of the mounting challenges of anthropogenic climate change.

While we continue to struggle through grief and ambiguity, our feelings of isolation are heightened. It’s challenging to be further disconnected from the communities that invigorate us in our work and in our lives. We are a community of committed memory keepers. It’s frustrating to not have the chance to get together in person and share our stories and our experiences.

Nevertheless, it’s moving to see ways that people across the digital preservation community have mobilized to create opportunities to connect and engage, despite the challenges of social isolation. In particular, we are all lucky to have the leadership and support that the Digital Preservation Coalition has provided through #DPConnect and in supporting the #WeMissiPres event.

We find ourselves alone together. Physically isolated, doomscrolling our way through a seemingly never-ending torrent of bad-to- worse news.Through all of that, however, I know we can also draw strength, solace, and compassion from the networks of communities we all participate in. I find the call to focus on maintenance and care all the more essential. I find myself grateful for the opportunity to continue to do this memory-keeping work.