APTrust is pleased to sponsor a new category in the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Digital Preservation Awards 2026: the Award for Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity. The Digital Preservation Awards 2026 comprise seven categories, celebrating achievement across the breadth of digital preservation practice, alongside the DPC Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding individual contributions to the field.
The new Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity category recognizes the sustained work required to maintain the infrastructure, tools, services, and shared resources that enable digital preservation. While new technologies and new projects often attract attention, the long-term health of digital preservation depends just as much on the people and communities who keep proven systems working, adapt them to changing needs, strengthen them against emerging risks, and ensure they remain available for the organizations and users who rely on them.
Why Digital Preservation Maintenance Matters
APTrust suggested creating this category because we see this work every day across the digital preservation community. Much of the infrastructure that supports our field is sustained by dedicated practitioners, developers, service owners, and community contributors. Some of this labor is formal and well-resourced. Much of it is quiet, collaborative, and sometimes volunteer. All of it is essential.
The Award for Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity is intended to highlight that essential work. It celebrates individuals, teams, and communities who maintain digital preservation workflows, tools, registries, shared services, and other core infrastructure over time.
Recognizing the People Behind Digital Preservation Infrastructure
Digital preservation tools are themselves subject to change, obsolescence, security concerns, shifting technical requirements, and evolving user needs. Keeping those tools healthy requires care, judgment, technical skill, and a commitment to continuity.
This recognition is especially important in a field where sustainability is central to the mission. Digital preservation is not only about building new things. It is also about renewing, reusing, repairing, and maintaining the systems that have already proven their value. By highlighting resilience and maintenance, the new award category encourages the community to value the long-term work that underpins trusted preservation services.
APTrust’s Role in the New DPC Award Category
APTrust is honored to serve as sponsor for this category. As a consortium dedicated to community-based digital preservation, we know that resilience is built through shared commitment. Reliable infrastructure does not happen by accident. It is the result of ongoing collaboration among institutions, practitioners, developers, and governance communities who invest in services meant to last.
As Nathan Tallman, Executive Director of APTrust, said:
“Digital preservation depends not only on new ideas, but on the sustained commitment of people who maintain, repair, adapt, and strengthen the infrastructure we all rely on. This category rightly shines a light on that essential work, much of it carried forward by generous communities and often by volunteer labor. It is time to recognize these champions of digital preservation.”
Digital Preservation Awards 2026 Shortlist Announcement
On Monday, June 15, the Digital Preservation Coalition announced the shortlist finalists for the 2026 Digital Preservation Awards. APTrust looks forward to celebrating the finalists in the new Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity category and to recognizing the people whose work helps keep digital preservation infrastructure strong, dependable, and responsive to the needs of our community.
Celebrating Long-Term Stewardship in Digital Preservation
Congratulations to all of the finalists, and thank you to everyone whose sustained labor supports digital preservation for the long term.