Since starting at LSE I have attended a fair bit of training, which has proved invaluable in introducing me to various aspects of digitisation and digital preservation.
Digital Futures
http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/
My first month at LSE coincided with Digital Futures 2009, run by King’s College digital consultancy, featuring two very experienced course leaders and an array of invited speakers and site visits. The course covers all aspects of digitisation, from technical through organisational to financial issues. The content was absolutely comprehensive.
For me, with a technical background in digitisation, the course was a great introduction to things that I was aware happened, and I was sure was a very good thing, but I had no real experience of managing. That included things like fund-raising, sustainability and a whole range of other organisational issues (like how to convince people that certain things are important–very useful!)
The course in its entirety was a whistle-stop tour of my job, essentially, and will prove invaluable for providing not only a view of how all these areas inter-relate (and how it is much, much more than “simple” technical issues) but also practical advice on how to proceed in any or all of these areas.
Digital Preservation Training Programme
Following on from the Digital Futures high-level look-at-everything course, I attended a specialist course on digital preservation, run by the University of London Computer Centre with input from Cornell University and the Digital Preservation Coalition.
From having a rudimentary grasp of some of the technical issues, the 3-day course took me to the point where I feel confident in my ability to assess digital collections, build action plans and, most importantly, how to talk about the risks and issues to a variety of stakeholders within an institution, most of who are not going to care about or particularly understand some of the detailed technical issues. By being to talk in terms of risk and finance about digital preservation will be an incredibly powerful tool when sorting out the resourcing for our digital preservation efforts.
Possibly the most useful skill provided by the course will be the ability to daunt people by waving around converse with people using the OAIS reference model to share issues.