Guest blog post by Dr Maureen Pennock, Head of Digital Collection Management at The British Library
If you’ve looked through the submission instructions for iPRES 2025 already, you may have noticed that we have a new approach to designating keywords: the iPRES Controlled Vocabulary. We’ve had a few questions about it, though we expect there’s a few in the wider community as well. This blog post is an open response to those questions so far, so that everyone can benefit.
Let’s start with the most obvious one: Why an iPRES Controlled Vocabulary?
Well, put simply, it’s to help support re-use of your papers. iPRES is now over 20 years old – and that’s a lot of papers. We want to help make it easier for folks to find relevant papers when they search across the whole corpus of proceedings. The Controlled Vocabulary keywords are one way to do that. There are other ways too (full-text search, fuzzy searching etc), though the benefit of this approach is that authors play an active part in the solution. And for those encountering iPRES for the first time, it also provides clarity on the types of topics suitable for iPRES submissions. Win-win, hopefully.
How were the terms in the Vocabulary selected?
We blended a few different resources to come up with the structure. The core structure for the digital preservation domain came from the CHARM domain level reference model (figure 3-2). We then analysed the keywords used in iPRES papers to date (over a thousand!) and established a core list of the thirty most common terms, establishing single terms to represent concepts where variations had been used. Finally, we did a gap analysis to identify and propose additional terms for significant domain specific areas we felt were otherwise under-represented. The resulting set of terms was shared in an iPRES 2024 poster to elicit feedback and the version you’re using now is the final product from that process.
How do I use the Vocabulary in my submission?
There’s a handy user guide in the iPRES Vocabulary Spreadsheet! You can add up to three keywords from the Vocabulary per submission. Take a look through the spreadsheet and select the most specific terms that directly describe your submission's primary topics. Try to avoid selecting broad or parent-level terms when more specific options are available. You can also add two optional non-Vocabulary terms if you wish, to identify a specific project or tool, or an important topic you feel isn’t otherwise represented.
Who maintains the Vocabulary?
The Vocabulary is maintained by the Continuity Subgroup of iPRES Steering Group (STG). iPRES is hosted by a different organisation each year but it’s the iPRES STG that maintains the conference series over time. The Continuity Subgroup is a new branch of iPRES STG that works to ensure consistency and continuity across conferences, rather than just relying on each year’s host to ‘pass the baton’ to the next. This includes looking back, looking now, and looking forwards:
Looking back: ensuring lessons of previous years are learned, documented, and findable.
Looking now: ensuring immediate and scheduled conferences support continuity and consistency in their delivery, reusing lessons learned from previous years.
Looking forwards: ensuring the continual relevance and value of the conference series to the digital preservation community and its diverse members.
The Vocabulary will help ensure a consistent approach to how iPRES classifies papers, aside from the themes set by local organisers from year to year. That’s why it’s under the remit of Continuity. We’re planning a review of the Vocabulary after iPRES 2025 to assess how it’s been applied and how we might improve it going forwards. If we spot any trends in the optional keywords, we’ll take these into account for future revisions.
Hope to see you in Wellington in November - and good luck with your submission!