Workshop Details

The Maintenance Culture workshop aims to increase small and mid-sized cultural heritage institutions’ capacity to preserve complex, born-digital creative works. Complex, born-digital creative works include digital design, time-based media art, software and net art, and virtual / augmented reality. Small cultural heritage institutions include libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other memory organizations who collect digital works.

The workshop is intended to support collections-care professionals who are already preserving less complex digital objects such as photographs or documents and are looking to acquire, display, and preserve works of a more technologically complex nature.

After completing the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Communicate barriers to preserving complex, born-digital creative works at their institution

• Assess complex, born-digital creative works to determine whether and how the collecting institution can commit to preserving it

• Draft a workflow for what to do if your institution acquires a complex, born-digital object

• Plan actionable steps towards collecting more complex, born-digital creative works than the institution is currently able to sustain access to

Participants will be asked to complete a virtual, asynchronous, pre-workshop class to learn about concepts that will be built upon in the workshop. The pre-workshop class will take around 3 hours to complete, depending on your prior knowledge of the concepts. The in-person workshop will focus on discussions, small group work, and independent work to accomplish tasks aimed at changing participants’ institutional preservation practices.

If you’re not sure if this workshop is for you, review the Workshop FAQ for more information on expectations around prior digital preservation knowledge.

The workshop will run from 9 am - 3 pm on both days.

Who Should Attend

Workers at collecting institutions including museums, archives, libraries, galleries, and other organizations that collect born-digital creative works like digital design, time-based media art, software and net, virtual/augmented reality and are seeking to better preserve and sustain long-term access to those materials. If most of the statements below describe you, the workshop will probably be a good fit. You...

• Work at a cultural heritage institution (library, archive, museum)

• Work at an institution that is actively collecting complex, born-digital, creative works, OR is ready to start collecting those works after gaining more in-house expertise

• Are comfortable with basic digital preservation concepts

• Have a role in decision-making or implementation of digital preservation practices at your institution

• Are interested in participating in a local community of practice for sustaining access to born-digital, creative works

  Location Information

  The Huntington Library, Museum, and Botanical Gardens

  San Marino, CA 91108

Applications will be accepted until October 25, 2023.