23 November 2021

On 21 October 2021, as part of the iPRES 2021 conference, members of the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) Preservation Sub-Committee, Ms Lai Tee Phang (Chair), Ms Natasa Milic-Frayling, Mr Robert Buckley and Mr Kevin Bradley organized a panel on “Digital Documenter Heritage: Securing Reliable and Sustainable Access”

The panel was moderated by Ms Lai-Tee Phang, the Chair of the UNESCO MoW Preservation Sub-Committee, and included experts in digital preservation and long-term access to documentary heritage:‍

• Natasa Milic-Frayling, Member of the UNECO MoW Preservation Sub-Committee, Intact Digital Ltd
• Peter Doorn, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), Netherlands    
• Tobias Steinke, German National Library    
• Ryder Kouba, UNESCO PERSIST, American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan
• Eric Chin, the National Library Board, Singapore.

The panel extended UNESCO MoW policy dialogue with the preservation community, focusing on issues of long-term and sustainable access to digital content.

With many challenges to safeguarding digitized and born digital content, including the continuous and rapid obsolescence of digital technologies, UNESCO is considering issues that require international policy interventions.

In October 2020, UNESCO held a two-session Virtual Policy Dialogue (Programme) and in September 2020 released a report with main outcomes. Video recordings of the sessions are available on the UNESCOPERSIST Web site.

Panel presentations

Panel included 10 minute presentations by each participant and a follow on discussion with questions from the audience.

Full recordings:

Recordings of individual presentations:

	Ms Lai Tee Phang Introduction
	Ms Natasa Milic-Frayling UNESCO policy dialogue and international policy agenda
	Mr Peter Doorn Preservation of and access to research data
	Mr Tobias Steinke Challenges of digital preservation at the German National Library
	Mr Ryder Kouba The importance of web archives
	Mr Eric Chin Legal frameworks