Wayne State University, School of Library and Information Science(WSU SLIS) hosted the first ever Regional Digital Preservation Practitioners(RDPP) Meeting on Wednesday April 24^th. The group was the creation of SLIS Lecturer, Kim Schroeder and University of Michigan Digital Preservation Librarian, Lance Stutchell. The colleagues decided after being introduced at the WSU Digital Preservation Student Colloquium in the Fall of 2012 to get a group of practitioners together to discuss the challenges of preserving digital information.

"We were really excited about the meeting and the Twitter-sphere was active about the meeting! I found it very interesting that, despite the diversity of institutions represented at the first meeting, so many of us are facing similar challenges in the area of digital preservation. I can see some really productive discussions around these challenges in future meetings." said Stuchell. The meeting was advertised to the Metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, Toledo and Southern Ontario professionals. The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) also was supportive about using this model for other regions.

Kim Schroeder mentioned that she was inspired by a conversation with SLIS alumni, Kevin Driedger at the Library of Michigan about gathering professionals together to talk about specifics for tackling the digital preservation problem. Since this meeting, Mid-Michigan is arranging a similar meeting. Look for their meeting announcement to come soon.

More than 30 people attended the inaugural meeting on a rainy and cold evening. After introductions, the attendees discussed how to structure the group and what issues were pertinent to their work. Long-term metadata preservation, digital curation and learning current technology tools were the biggest concerns. They toured the new WSU SLIS Digital Media Projects Lab which houses migration equipment for phonograph albums, cassette tapes and VHS as well as four scanners.

The night was rounded out with a presentation on DSpace an open source tool for managing digital assets. See the presentation by our own recent graduate, Bradley Woodruff here:

https://connect.slis.wayne.edu/dspace

University of Detroit Mercy offered to host the next meeting which will gather each quarter. The RDPP group assigned itself homework for the next meeting. Each attendee is to review the NDSA Levels of Preservation and discuss what seems doable for them in their institution.

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/11/ndsa-levels-of-digital-preservation-release-candidate-one/

For more information about RDPP, please look here: http://digitalpreservationpractitioners.wordpress.com/