There have been some excellent discussions on the OPF blogs about a range of issues, and we would like to thank those of you who have contributed to that. This has illustrated the incredible amount of knowledge in the community about the digital preservation challenges we face, and also about potential solutions.
Collaboration & Consolidation
We have set up a Practitioners’ requirements wiki on the OPF-Labs service, called ‘What We Need’. Our aim is to populate the wiki with this knowledge, facilitate discussions about preservation problems and outline requirements for digital preservation tools. By working collaboratively, the community can refine these requirements to create solid use cases for development work. (See http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/REQ/Home). We have added a wishlist to get discussions started and have provided a couple of examples of problem descriptions, requirements and use cases within some of the topics.
Prize
To celebrate the OPF’s first birthday on 1 June, we will be awarding the person who provides the best contribution to the wiki/website with a Samsung Galaxy Player.
Email lists
We have set up three new email lists that OPF website account holders can subscribe to:
·OPF News
Receive the latest news announcements from OPF including information about upcoming events, publications, and milestones.
·OPF Practitioners’ Working Group
Contribute to a collaborative understanding of tool requirements. Receive announcements about new tool developments and be invited to test them and provide feedback.
OPF website information
A very low-traffic list for people who have an account on the website. If we have any problems with the site, e.g. extended downtime or security issues, we will alert you through this list.
To subscribe to these lists, please login and edit your preferences under the ‘Email subscriptions’ tab. You can also update your details under edit>>personal information.
To sign up for an OPF account visit: http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/user/register and select the email lists you wish to join.
Events pages
We have also updated our events pages so you can add information about relevant events that you think would be of interest to the digital preservation community. Events coming soon will be highlighted on the front page of the website. http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/events.
Feedback
Get in touch with us to let us know what you think of the new additions and make suggestions as to other features you would like to see on the website or wiki. Email: [email protected]
Stubs for the OPF-Wiki
The wishlist on the OPF wiki is typically what is called “stub” in wiki terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub#Basic_information
It sets direction into what we need and solicits other content contributors to co-author the “stub” into a real knowledge article. This knowledge article will support the creation of requirements and use cases.
The idea behind the low threshold and speed for creating stubs is one of the strengths of a wiki (wiki means fast in Hawaiian).
Stubs that don’t develop into relevant wiki knowledge articles will be deleted at some point in time. Probably the wish (stub)could not evolve into a sustainable article leading to a useful knowledge article.
OPF will support and moderate the process from “stub to requirement”, but editorial input needs to come from our digital preservation community. This means OPF members and the wider community because this is where the knowledge resides and the OPF wiki facilitates dissemination.