The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) seeks feedback on its newly released draft of the Carbon Footprint Toolkit. The toolkit has been being developed by the DPC Carbon Footprint Task Force over the past year to create a resource for organizations to correctly and efficiently calculate the carbon footprint of their digital collections and preservation work. The toolkit includes best practices, instructions, and a Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool to make that work as accessible as possible for any size organization or institution that might benefit from it.
Alicia Wise, the Executive Director of CLOCKSS and task force chair was quoted in the call for participation:
“The DPC’s 170+ members in 20+ countries identified environmental sustainability of digital preservation as a key topic of shared interest, and it has been an honour to chair the talented task and finish group convened to develop a toolkit on calculating the carbon footprint of digital preservation activities. We drew on experience from Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US to deliver a guide that will help you no matter what stage of the journey you are on. Please join us on this journey, and we will be delighted to evolve the toolkit based on your implementation experiences!”
Everyone is welcome to add comments and suggestions to the draft Google doc linked above. Additionally, the task force is also putting together a small working group of members from various institutions and types of organizations to use the toolkit and participate in monthly meetings to discuss their experiences and findings. Anyone interesting in participating as part of that small working group can fill out the expression of interest form by April 10, 2026.
If you have any questions about the toolkit or the testing and feedback phase of the project you can reach out to the task force through their feedback form.
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This post was produced through a cooperation between Amy Gay, Abbie Norris-Davidson, Mariam Ismail, Carrie Pirmann, Trip Kirkpatrick, and Mimosa Shah (Editors-at-Large), Ruth Carpenter, Hillary Richardson, and Caitlin Christian-Lamb (Editors for the week), Claudia Berger, Molly McGuire, Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Linsey Ford, Pamella Lach, Christine Salek, and Rachel Starry (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).