Digital Preservation Made Practical: Immediate Actions and Long-Term Strategies

Speaker: Rachel Appel

Date/Time: Monday, September 29, 2025 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm 

Location: Virtual / Zoom

Description:

This workshop introduces participants to the essentials of digital preservation and provides hands-on opportunities to put key practices into action. We will start with core concepts and low-barrier activities that repositories can implement right away, such as organizing file structures, checking fixity, and documenting basic metadata.

In the second half, participants will engage directly with sample evaluation matrixes. Working in groups, attendees will practice customizing criteria, weighting priorities, and comparing features to see how different digital preservation systems align with their own repository’s needs.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a starter toolkit of immediately usable practices, along with practical strategies for evaluating and planning toward larger-scale digital preservation solutions.

Meet the Speaker

Rachel Appel is the Digital Preservation Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. In this position, she develops, documents, implements and oversees preservation workflows, procedures and policies for the Penn Libraries' digital collections and assets, both digitized and born-digital. She also collaborates with stakeholders across the Libraries and the University to develop programmatic and sustainable policies and workflows to address digital curation and long-term digital preservation needs for the Libraries and related campus assets.

Registration Link:  Digital Preservation Made Practical

Activating Your Oral History Collections: Open-Source Tools and Techniques For Modern Archives

Speaker: Mark Boas 

Date/Time: Tuesday September 30, 2025 from 10:00am-12:00pm

Location: Virtual / Zoom

Description:

Join media technologist Mark Boas for a practical workshop on transforming oral history collections into dynamic, accessible resources. Drawing from his experience developing platforms and tools, Mark will demonstrate cost-effective transcription workflows, including AI-powered tools and community-driven approaches that work within tight budgets.

Participants will explore open-source software solutions for managing transcript-based media, learn about free tools that enable public remixing and engagement with collections, and discover ways to make oral histories searchable and shareable. The session covers the entire pipeline from initial transcription to public access, with hands-on demonstrations of transcription tools, interactive transcript technologies, and repository platforms. Perfect for librarians, archivists, oral historians, and anyone managing spoken word collections who wants to maximize impact while minimizing costs.

Speaker Bio: 

Mark Boas is a media technologist pioneering accessible spoken word content through web-based audio and video solutions. As CTO of TheirStory Inc, he leads the technology behind the oral history platform trusted by prestigious institutions including the Los Angeles Public Library, 92NY, Cornell University, and The America 250 Foundation. Mark co-founded Trint, the automated transcription platform that transformed how organizations handle audio and video content, and Hyperaudio, which develops groundbreaking interactive transcript technologies. He also created jPlayer, an open source web-based audio and video player used by millions worldwide.

Mark's expertise in media innovation has been sought by major news organizations including Al Jazeera and the BBC, where he helped reimagine how audiences engage with audio and video content. Awarded an Open News Fellowship by the Knight Foundation and Mozilla, he remains committed to open source development, collaborating closely with non-profits to ensure spoken word archives remain searchable, shareable, and preservable for future generations. His work focuses on breaking down barriers between audiences and audio content, making oral histories and media collections accessible to all.

Registration Link: Activating Your Oral History Collections