Month: August 2022

Now Available: The 2021 NDSA Staffing Survey Report

The NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group is excited to announce the publication of the 2021 Staffing Survey Report, now available in the NDSA OSF.

The NDSA Staffing Survey is designed to gain insight into current staffing realities for digital preservation programs, and was substantially redesigned in 2021 based on feedback from previous surveys and changes in the field over the past decade.  

Completed by 269 individuals, the report documents the survey responses related to the following areas of focus: 1) Background Information, 2) Digital Preservation Activities and Planning, 3) Digital Preservation Organization and Staffing, 4) Staffing Qualifications and Training, and 5) Final Thoughts about Digital Preservation Staffing and Organization.

Several key points emerged from the 2021 survey. The report provides additional analysis and further detail around the following:

  • Perceptions of digital preservation seemed to shift according to respondents’ roles within their organizations. Respondents’ answers to questions relating to a range of questions including digital preservation priority, policy, organization, skill sets, staffing levels, and more often reflected their reported role within digital preservation at their organization.
  • Survey respondents overwhelmingly perceived digital preservation at their organizations as understaffed. A majority of respondents reported that they did not feel like their organization had the staffing in place to manage the content for which they are responsible.
  • Generalized longitudinal trends can be seen over the last ten years. Data comparison across the 2012, 2017, and 2021 surveys allows for the observation of some general trends, including around how well digital preservation is implemented at organizations. Across the last ten years that the survey has been conducted, dissatisfaction rates around the organization and implementation of digital preservation rose from just over one-third of respondents in 2012 to nearly half in 2017 and 2021.

Additional information for review includes the Survey codebook and data files, also available in the NDSA OSF.

If you have questions or concerns about this survey, please contact ndsa.digipres@gmail.com and include “Staffing Survey” in the subject line.

Many thanks to everyone in the community who completed the survey. We appreciate the time and effort you put into your answers, and the resulting report is all the better for it.

Thank you to the members of the 2021 Staffing Survey Working Group for your hard work and dedication: Rachel Appel, Brenna Edwards, Heather Heckman, Déirdre Joyce, Margaret Kidd, Julia Kim, Sharon McMeekin, Krista Oldham, Shira Peltzman, Jessica Venlet, and Hannah Wang.

-The NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group co-chairs, Elizabeth England and Lauren Work

NDSA Announces 2022 Slate of Candidates for Coordinating Committee

NDSA is happy to announce the 2022 slate of Coordinating Committee (CC) candidates. Elections will soon be held for three (3) CC members. The CC is dedicated to ensuring a strategic direction for NDSA, to the advancement of NDSA activities to achieve community goals, and to further communication among digital preservation professionals and NDSA member organizations. The CC is responsible for reviewing and approving NDSA membership applications and publications; updating eligibility standards for membership in the alliance, and other strategic documents; engaging with stakeholders in the community; and working to enroll new members committed to our core mission. The successful candidates will each serve a three year term. Ballots will be sent to membership organization contacts in the coming weeks.

Terrance D’Ambrosio

Terrance D’Ambrosio has worked in the field of digital imaging and visual resources since 2007. Terrance confers with NEDCC’s clients to evaluate their collections and develop digital imaging proposals and specifications, and works closely with the Center’s paper and book conservation laboratories on projects that require both conservation treatment and digital imaging. He sets standards for quality control and workflow in NEDCC’s Digital Imaging department, and maintains best practices for digital capture and preservation. He is a graduate of Vassar College with a degree in Art History and previously managed the Digital Imaging Unit of the New York Public Library.

Shira Peltzman

Shira is the Digital Archivist for UCLA Library Special Collections where she works with stakeholders on an enterprise-wide basis to preserve and make LSC’s born-digital material accessible to the widest possible audience. As a current member of the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group, she has seen firsthand the importance of undertaking this work collectively and the impact that it has on the field. Shira is interested in serving as a member of the NDSA Coordinating Committee because she would like to help guide and coordinate this work to maximize the quality, relevance, consistency, and overall effectiveness of the publications that come out of all Interest and Working Groups.

Deon Schutte

Deon Schutte (Content Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2022-2024) worked as a freelance typesetter in the educational publishing industry in South Africa for many years. In 2018 he completed his B.INF (Bachelor of Information Science) through the University of South Africa and his B.INF Honours in 2019. Deon is a MPhil (Master of Philosophy, specialising in Digital Curation) candidate at the University of Cape Town (the first African member of the NDSA). He serves as the Chair of the Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers (ASAIB) and is a Fellow of the South African Chefs Association. He works at Africa Media Online as digital curator and project manager of the production team that is busy arranging and digitising the extensive archive of one of the prominent politicians of the anti-Apartheid struggle. He resides in Pietermaritzburg (Msunduzi), South Africa.

Bethany Scott

Bethany is the Head of Preservation & Reformatting at the University of Houston Libraries. In this role she provides strategic leadership for the Libraries’ physical and digital preservation programs, and digitization and reformatting services for the Libraries and its patrons. Bethany also serves as Product Owner of the Libraries’ open-source digital access and preservation ecosystem, which incorporates Avalon, Hyrax, Archivematica, and ArchivesSpace. Her areas of expertise include digital preservation, born-digital archives, scanning and imaging, and reuse of archival metadata.

Bethany is currently researching how to assess and improve the Libraries’ carbon footprint, particularly for its digital and computing infrastructure; as part of this research, she has presented at the IS&T Archiving and the NDSA Digital Preservation conferences, and anticipates co-facilitating a workshop on “Enacting Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation” for the Southeast Asia Regional Branch of the ICA later this year.

Bethany is also a founding member and steering committee chair for the Texas Archivematica Users Group, which has facilitated information sharing and collaboration among Archivematica practitioners in Texas and beyond. She is a dedicated advocate for fostering community engagement and building shared infrastructure for the digital preservation field, and looks forward to bringing this passion to the NDSA Coordinating Committee.

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