Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshops, a well-known continuing education series hosted by the MIT Libraries, helps managers of digital content at any organization establish sustainable digital preservation programs. DPM recently held an advanced interactive workshop, Management Considerations for Digital Forensics. The December 17 workshop covered policies, rules, and protocols in organizational decision making for incorporating digital forensics tools and techniques into digital curation and preservation practices.

Nineteen attendees came from local universities and organizations, including Boston College, Harvard University, and Northeast Document Conservation Center, to learn about digital forensics concepts and benefits in digital curation and preservation. Instructors examined digital forensic issues and options by matching curatorial use cases to the tools, metadata, and reports in the BitCurator environment. BitCurator is open-source software that aims to provide access to disk images.

The workshop instructors included Nancy McGovern, co-founder of the DPM Workshops since 2003 and head of Digital Preservation Services, MIT Libraries; Kari Smith, senior instructor and project manager of DPM Workshops since 2008 and digital archivist for the Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries; and Christopher (Cal) Lee, guest DPM Workshop instructor, associate professor at the School of Library and Information Sciences, UNC-Chapel Hill, and principal investigator of BitCurator and BitCurator Access projects.

DPM workshops are made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.