Digital Preservation Virtual 2025 - Call for Proposals

meetings

Conference Format and Dates

Digital Preservation 2025 will be a virtual conference held October 9-10, 2025.

Conference Theme: Where We’re At: Digital Preservation in Uncertain Times

In order for digital preservation to be successful, the practice requires an environment of stability and the ability to make long-term plans. Our current moment requires the community to examine, extend, and reinterpret the foundations of our work to ensure we can achieve our missions. For the NDSA Digital Preservation conference this year, we invite proposals that grapple with how we as digital preservation practitioners and leaders can continue this work in times of chaos and uncertainty. How are you thinking about succession and contingency planning for collections? How are you finding the resources to continue the work when they are becoming more difficult to procure? How are you engaging with the emotional labor necessary to succeed at this work? How are you building community to support your needs and solve problems?

Call for Proposals

We invite presentations on the following topics as they relate to the conference theme:

  • Digital preservation
  • Preservation metadata
  • Digital archiving and curation
  • Partnerships and consortia
  • Advocacy and outreach
  • Digital preservation aspects of digitization
  • Project management
  • Change management
  • Contingency planning
  • Repository management
  • Storage infrastructure (cloud or local)
  • AI in digital preservation
  • Web archiving
  • Workflows
  • Digital preservation tools

Please note that proposals do not have to adhere to our conference theme to be considered, but we especially encourage proposals that attempt to engage with the topics listed above

Submission Information

Submission length and format

  • Submissions will all be 15 minute talks or demos.
  • Talks will be grouped into panels of three presentations of a similar theme with a shared 15 minute question and answer period for the hour long session.

Submission Requirements:

  • Proposal title
  • First and last names, organizational affiliations, and email addresses for all authors / presenters
  • Abstract (50 words max)
  • Proposal (250 words)
  • All submissions are under a CC-BY 4.0 license, which allows for sharing and adaptation of content but which requires appropriate credit and an indication of any changes made by others. Presenters must agree to share their work under this license in the submission form.

Evaluation Criteria: All submissions will be peer-reviewed by NDSA’s Digital Preservation 2025 Program Committee. The DigiPres Planning Committee will give strong preference to programming that is fully inclusive and reflects a wide range of expression and identity. When evaluating proposals, the Planning Committee will:

  • Consider the contribution of the submission to the overall conference program
  • Recommend the proposal on a scale of 1-5 whether to reject or accept the proposal, and
  • Rate their familiarity on a scale of 1-5 (1 being completely new, 5 being very familiar).
  • They may also recommend the proposal for presentation as a lightning talk.

Submit your Proposal

Presenters will be notified of their acceptance in late July. All presenters will need to record their presentation to be played at the conference and then be available for the question and answer period live during the scheduled session time. Presenters will receive support in the form of tutorials, resources, and individual assistance.

Note: All conference attendees are expected to abide by the NDSA Code of Conduct, and proposals should be submitted in the spirit of NDSA’s Values and Principles.

Questions?

Feel free to reach out to ndsa.digipres@gmail.com and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

About the NDSA and Digital Preservation Virtual 2025

The NDSA is a consortium of over 275 organizations committed to the long-term preservation and stewardship of digital information and cultural heritage. Digital Preservation 2025 is the conference hosted by NDSA. Open to members and non-members alike, it highlights the theory and practice of digital stewardship and preservation, data curation, the digital object lifecycle, and related issues.