Recently, the preservation community lost one of her pioneers: Hans Hofman (1948-2025) passed away last September. Hans worked as senior advisor for the National Archives in the Netherlands and retired a few years ago. I first met him in 2005, when the KB National Library and the National Archive worked together on emulation and other preservation related items. Often, we had discussions about the difference between libraries and archives and it was clear that on some topics, like for example authenticity, his arguments were stronger than ours. No wonder, he already dealt with this topic for years. From the beginning in the 90-ties, he was involved in digital preservation of “electronic” records and participated in several Dutch governmental initiatives to realise policies and a technical infrastructure to preserve these records. Like the program Digital Longevity (1995-1998). He participated in Interpares, DLM Forum, DRAMBORA, Erpanet and numerous other projects. In the European project PLANETS, we both worked on the concept of Preservation Planning. He may be gone, but his insights are still valuable and can be found in the articles he wrote.
For me, he has a prominent place in my Digital Preservation Hall of Fame.