As of June 2023, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome its four most recent applicants into the membership. Each new member brings a host of skills and experience to our group. Read the brief introductions of each below, keep an eye out for them on your calls and be sure to give them a shout out. Please join me in welcoming our new members! To review our list of all members, you can see them here.
Hamilton College Library and Information Technology Services
Hamilton College Library and Information Technology Services’ activities include: supporting digitized special collections content; developing procedures and guidelines for digital preservation, both within the library and to support faculty partnerships; developing a digital preservation roadmap that relies heavily on the NDSA Levels of Preservation to assess and visualize their starting point and progress. Looking ahead, they anticipate born digital archival collections growing, and plan to select a storage solution suitable for long-term digital preservation.
Hamilton College is interested in joining NDSA to seek continuing education to support and grow their commitment to digital preservation, to join a community of practice where they can both benefit from the knowledge of others and contribute back to the field, and to increase their connections in the digital preservation professional community.
Texas State University
The Texas State University Libraries is committed to digital preservation of library and cultural heritage assets held and created by all departments, including Wittliff Special Collections, University Archives, Institutional Repository and data management, and general collections. Key initiatives completed by Texas State University Libraries’ Digital Preservation Committee include obtaining secure designated server storage for digital preservation content, and creating process to request increases in this storage; writing a Digital Preservation Policy; implementing Archivematica; and purchasing space and support for DuraCloud via the Texas Digital Library (TDL) digital preservation service DuraCloud@TDL. Committee members are active locally in TDL, regularly presenting and sitting and chairing committees. Texas State University Libraries looks forward to opportunities to contribute to NDSA initiatives and collaborate with colleagues in the field internationally.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Libraries sought to join NDSA in order to contribute to and be a part of national standards and best practices for digital preservation. They currently preserve digitized and born-digital content from their Historical Collections, including the UAB Archives and the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library. In the near future, they plan to expand this to include web archiving, A/V materials, and 3D models and digital reproductions. Down the line they anticipate work on preserving complex digital objects, such as software, multimedia theses, and digital humanities projects.
University of Rochester
In the past few years, the University of Rochester (UR) has made a concerted commitment to building out a robust digital preservation program to ensure the digital assets entrusted to UR’s stewardship are available far into the future. This has involved contracting with Preservica as a technology solution, hiring two full time staff dedicated to the work (a Digital Asset Management Lead and Digital Asset Management Analyst), building out a policy portfolio to characterize and support the work, and providing a consistent funding stream for all the above.
UR works extensively with digitized special collections (including large amounts of A/V), born digital archival materials, and web archives. The University of Rochester desires to continue to deepen involvement with this work by joining with other practitioners to learn from the wealth of knowledge present in the community and to contribute back to it by sharing what is learned over the course of UR’s work, as well as by engaging in professional service opportunities through NDSA.
