The Mellon Foundation has awarded $1.28 million to support the next cycle of the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N), led by the Pratt Institute School of Information in collaboration with NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program. This grant extends the project for another four-year cycle.
DPOE-N addresses the need for libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) professionals to develop digital preservation skills. As archives have become increasingly digital, many institutions lack the funding to build this capacity. DPOE-N supports cultural heritage institutions and professionals nationwide through recruitment and training programs to help them store, maintain, and provide access to digital materials.
Launched by the Library of Congress in 2010, DPOE-N was transferred to Pratt Institute’s School of Information and NYU’s MIAP program in 2018. Since then, DPOE-N has provided free workshops on topics such as web archiving, command line tools, and inclusive digital preservation practices. DPOE-N also provides funding for cultural heritage professionals to access training and purchase emergency hardware.
Digital preservation practitioners, including NYU MIAP and Pratt students, learn to manage and migrate digital content to maintain accessibility as technology evolves. This work accounts for disruptions such as natural disasters, economic upheaval, war, and public health crises.
“We are so pleased and humbled to receive this incredible grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the nation’s libraires, archives, and museums transition to preserving digital information,” said Anthony Cocciolo, Dean of Pratt’s School of Information and Principal Investigator for the grant in Pratt’s announcement of this award. “The digital files created today and over the last 25 years will form the archival record of the future that scholars and the public will use to create historical narratives around all aspects of arts, science, society and culture. Now more than ever, digital information is essential to understand our world: where we have come from to inform where we are going.”
DPOE-N received Mellon Foundation grants in 2020 and 2022, supporting over 200 professionals across 39 states and Puerto Rico with digital preservation training. The funds also helped COVID-19 impacted institutions and enabled multi-day workshops in Puerto Rico addressing the island's unique challenges, like extreme weather.
The new grant enables DPOE-N to continue programming in Puerto Rico with four in-person workshops over the next four years. It also includes 20 online workshops on technical and human resource topics, and 177 microgrants for LAM professionals to increase access to digital preservation training. All online workshops will be offered in both Spanish and English to support Spanish-speaking communities.
DPOE-N will be supported by five graduate assistants from NYU’s MIAP program and Pratt’s School of Information and, led by DPOE-N Program Manager Kirk Mudle, who is a graduate of the NYU MIAP program (2023).
“The Mellon Foundation’s generous support is a great encouragement to keep the DPOE-N moving forward and strengthen work with different communities,” said Juana Suárez, NYU MIAP Director and Associate Professor, Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, “NYU MIAP is committed to continuing the partnership with Pratt Institute to increase awareness of how vital digital preservation is in safeguarding our collective memory, knowledge, and cultural heritage, ensuring that valuable information remains accessible and usable for future generations, despite technological changes and potential data loss.”
DPOE-N’s website provides more information on the initiative, as well as a database of resources and upcoming workshops.
The NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) Master of Arts program is a unit of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, part of the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television within NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The MIAP degree is a two-year, interdisciplinary course of study that trains future professionals to manage and preserve collections of film, video, digital, and multimedia works. MIAP combines humanities (the history and context of moving images) with sciences and engineering (the technical processes of how media are created, deteriorate, and can be restored), and ensures constant exposure to real world experiences through class projects and internships. MIAP is a leading audiovisual preservation program, committed to sharing, ongoing education, and preservation that supports access and use.
About Tisch School of the Arts
For over 50 years, the NYU Tisch School of the Arts has drawn on the vast artistic and cultural resources of New York City and New York University to create an extraordinary training ground for the individual artist and scholar of the arts. Today, students learn their craft in a spirited, risk-taking environment that combines the professional training of a conservatory with the liberal arts education of a premier global university with campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and 11 academic centers around the world. Learn more at www.tisch.nyu.edu.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.