Justin Simpson

Justin Simpson talking at ICA Barcelona 2025 in front of the title slide Fast Learns, Slow Remembers: Systems thinking in digital preservation using the Pace Layer and Viable Systems models.

I gave a talk today at #icabarcelona2025 called 'Fast Learns, Slow Remembers: Systems Thinking in digital preservation using the Pace Layer and Viable System models'. Slides are here: docs.google.com/presentation...

3rd international conference Digital libraries Tools for(ever) Digital Preservation Open-Source software repositories: Archivematica, Fedora Commons, ROAD, Tape libraries and archiving systems, HP, IBM Quantum. October 15, 2025 9:30 CEST ON-LINE Free registration: https://forms.office.com/e/Mne6g04WhF%E2%80%8B You are invited by IFLA Preservation and Conservation Center National Library of Poland Competence center for library digitization

I am speaking at an online conference next week. Oct 15 9:30 CEST. IFLA Preservation and Conservation Center​, National Library of Poland​: Digital libraries: Tools for(ever) Digital Preservation
Open Source Tools supporting long term digital preservation
polona.pl/static/polon...
free and online

Open by Default: Towards a Manifesto for May Day This is intended to be a statement to our customers, our user and developer communities, and our staff. By writing down our intentions in using open source software we move towards aligning our action...

If you would like to read the full blog post about our views on openness and open source software, it has been posted on our website. Happy May 1st! www.artefactual.com/post/open-by... #opensource #digipres #archives #labourday #mayday

Happy May Day! May is also Maintainer Month, highlighting the work of those who care for open source projects. Being open isn’t the only way to contribute to a practice of care but we think it is the best way. Today we are going to post some of our reasons why. #open #opensource #digipres #archives

April 1, 2025 For immediate release[nope]

For immediate release:
www.artefactual.com/post/april-1...

I showed this to @drkrawz.bsky.social you fooled her @lundieeducation.bsky.social

FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies LLM scrapers are taking down FOSS projects' infrastructure, and it's getting worse.

*LLM scrapers relentlessly hammering open-source websites

https://thelibre.news/foss-infrastructure-is-under-attack-by-ai-companies/

LI-MA - Living Media Art | Transformation Digital Art 2025 LI-MA's 2025 Symposium on preserving digital art. Explore challenges of conserving digital, performative, and processual artworks.

Artefactualities @kellystewart.bsky.social and @justinsimpson.bsky.social are in Amsterdam this week at the international symposium on the preservation of digital art. Don't be shy - come say hi if you are here! li-ma.nl/article/tran... #digipres

AtoM 2.9.0 released this week We are pleased to announce the release of AtoM 2.9.0 this week. This major release included large update work to bring ElasticSearch to version 6.8.3 and PHP support to 8.3, including a number of bug ...

New release means it's cake time! AtoM 2.9 is now available 🎉 This was a big one with a number of dependency updates to cover. Many thanks to all who contributed 🫶 Links and all the details can be found: www.artefactual.com/post/atom-2-...

In my book A Matter of Facts: The Importance of Evidence in an Information Age, I highlighted the grievous misdeeds of DJT, including his abject disregard for the rule of law. Without authentic evidence, we lose the fight for truth. We haven't won the fight, and we must fight on. #evidence #archives

Gathering the Contributor Community "What turns that project into a community are the people who engage with one another around that code. No matter the maturity level of your project, one of the most important things you can do to ensu...

Sarah Mason wrote a blog post about her work with the Archivematica and Access to Memory contributor communities

www.artefactual.com/post/gatheri...

Unexpected errors in the BagIt area Exploring the many ways a BagIt bag can be invalid, and how you might want to build a process for validating bags to ensure the quality of your digital archive.

Unexpected errors in the BagIt area: alexwlchan.net/2025/bagit-e...

BagIt is a packaging format often used in digital archives, and I worked with it quite a lot in a previous job. I wrote up some of the ways a BagIt bag can be invalid, and how I think you should try to validate bags. #digipres

Congestion Pricing is creating tremendous benefits.
Subway Ridership: ⬆️ 13%
Bus Ridership: ⬆️ 6% (⬆️ 21% weekends)
Transit Crime: 🔻36%
Fatal Car Crashes: 🔻44%
Trip Times: 🔻10-30%

Cover of the first issue of the Pace Layers journal

Introduction page of the first edition of Pace Layers journal included a diagram illustrating the 20,000 year span of 'the long now'

Very happy to get this in the post today. The first issue of a new annual journal called Pace Layers, from @longnow.org

If you see this post, quote with a bridge from your gallery:

Dumfries Suspension Bridge

The Ewart Library in Dumfries is looking very handsome this morning.

John Pelan from @scotsarchives.bsky.social showed the new yourscottisharchives.com website this morning in Stirling at the SCA annual conference. A portal with archival descriptions from 60 Scottish organisations

how do you all remember every UUID? I find it really hard. so I wrote them all down on every uuid dot com

the list has fast search across all 2^122 values (so you can find your favorites) - hoping to add some social features like "trending UUIDs" soon!

Your Checksum is in the mail Artefactual is pleased to announce the launch of a new commercial service. Building on the success of our Bag Bags, starting April 1st 2024 we will be delivering all of our customers checksums by post...

Great News! Artefactual has launched a new commercial service. Read all about it

www.artefactual.com/post/your-ch...

That's in Dumfries!

No better day than World Digital Preservation Day to post our first message here and to point you towards some good work being done by a colleague we met at iPres this year, Maureen Kenga. www.artefactual.com/post/wdpd-an... #wdpd2023 #digipres

Happy #WorldDigitalPreservationDay!

To provide accessible tools for #DigitalPreservation, public-sector support & collaboration on #OpenSource software is the #WayToGo, according to our specialist Corinne Frappart.

Read more in @DPC_chat's blog: bit.ly/45MnYni

#WDPD2023

NAM-WDPD2023-Justin-Artefactual Hello, Thank you to the National Archives of Malaysia for inviting me to speak today, it is an honour to be here. An Overview of Digital Preservation Systems Justin Simpson Managing Director 2 Novembe...

Happy World Digital Preservation Day 2023! Great start for me, watching interesting presentations by Joshua Ng from Nat Archives NZ and William Kilbride from DPC for an Arkib Negara (National Archives of Malaysia) event. #WDPD2023

I also presented, my slides are here: bit.ly/3tZezM5

DLM: From Archivematica to Enduro: An Evolutionary Tale Hello, This is the first time that Artefactual has participated in the DLM Forum You are an interesting and inspiring group, and Salamanca is a beautiful place. We are very happy to be here, and I hop...

Yesterday I gave a presentation at the DLM Forum in Salamanca about open source software, archival principles, and the evolution of software at Artefactual - slides at bit.ly/471pMtM #DLM_Forum

Entrepreneurship for Engineers: Non-DevTool Open Source Let’s shine some light on the world of open source companies that don’t necessarily make tools for developers — and why those organizations still think an open source model is the right way to b...

I was interviewed for an article on The New Stack, about companies that build open source software that are not dev tools thenewstack.io/entrepreneur...

Vendors/sales reps need to realize that when you're talking to librarians and archivists, presenting "preservation" as something that can be achieved simply (or really, achieved at all in any kind of finished state) is the BIGGEST red flag.

I gave a presentation and demo at the ICA Congress in Abu Dhabi today, about Open Source in Archives, and showing a case study of new digital preservation work at Artefactual. Slides here: tinyurl.com/enduroa3m