Celebrating DigiPres 2023 and Looking Ahead to Next Year

The 2023 Digital Preservation Conference, which wrapped up in St Louis on November 16, was a welcome opportunity to connect with colleagues, hear about their work, and find opportunities for future collaborations. It was also a chance to celebrate groups and individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of digital stewardship. NDSA Leadership is grateful to the conference planning committee, presenters, attendees, and our hosts for making the event such a great success.

While the DigiPres planning committee was hard at work planning for this year’s conference, there was another working group that was reimagining what the future of the conference might look like. Like many organizations, NDSA held a virtual conference in 2020 and 2021, which allowed us to have greater attendance and a farther reach than ever before. Even as we held in-person conferences in 2022 and 2023, we were aware that returning to a pre-pandemic status quo was not feasible or desirable for many members of our community. We received feedback on the format, length, cost, and content of the conference, and we wanted to address the concerns and barriers expressed in that feedback. In late 2022, the Long-Term Conference Planning Working Group was charged with examining NDSA’s annual conference practices and making strategic recommendations on the future of NDSA conferencing and events. Over the past year, the group gathered information about a variety of conference models from other organizations and participated in facilitated discussion to brainstorm how we might make in-person NDSA events more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable.

The Long-Term Conference Planning Working Group delivered their recommendations last month. They have recommended that NDSA lengthen the interval between its national in-person conferences and create a clear mission statement for those in-person gatherings. They have also recommended that NDSA explore the implementation of smaller “Designated Community” events to be held in partnership with other national and/or regional organizations (spot the OAIS joke!). These recommendations suggest developing a more holistic strategy for programming and events held by NDSA, and they deserve time and careful consideration for implementation.

Therefore, NDSA has decided not to hold a conference in 2024. Instead, we will focus our energy on building on the recommendations made by the Long-Term Conference Planning Working Group. We have charged a new working group for NDSA Events Strategy, which will receive support from NDSA Leadership and guidance from the individuals who have stewarded the conference up until this point.

We understand that the lack of DigiPres next year will be disappointing to many members of our community. It is our hope that the community will also understand the need for a more deliberate approach to planning conferences and other events, and that planning such a strategy requires its own time and focus, especially in an organization that relies on volunteer contributions. We strongly encourage anyone who may have otherwise been involved in planning or preparing for DigiPres next year to volunteer for the NDSA Events Strategy Working Group, which will start recruiting in January 2024. We are especially interested in having participation from previous conference planning committee participants and co-chairs, as well as other individuals who have experience with programming and events.

Thank you again to everyone who helped make DigiPres 2023 the success that it was! We hope to see you at the virtual event starting January 31, 2024.

~ Hannah Wang, NDSA Coordinating Committee Chair
~ Bethany Scott, NDSA Coordinating Committee Vice Chair
~ Stacey Erdman, DigiPres Conference Planning Committee Chair
~ Déirdre Joyce, DigiPres Conference Planning Committee Vice Chair

Registration Open for NDSA’s Virtual Event

Registration is now open for NDSA’s Virtual Digital Preservation Conference Redux: Communities of Time and Place. This virtual extension of our November 2023 in-person event will feature a selection of panelists who presented in St. Louis as well as additional presenters bringing in new content, including – but not limited to – more extensive updates from our Excellence Awards Winners as well as updates from NDSA’s Interest and Working Groups. While presentations will be recorded and uploaded to NDSA’s YouTube Channel, the event will feature live discussions and Q&A with many of our talented presenters.

As we are creating the conference schedule to fit the content, a final schedule is not yet available, though it should be posted later this month (December). Even so, you can register for the event now and get all the schedule updates as they become available.

This event will be held from January 31 – February 1, 2024. In order to serve the broadest community possible, events will be held on both days from 4:00pm – 8:30pm GST (UTC +0)/11:00am – 3:30pm EST (UTC -5)/8:00am – 12:30am (UTC -8)

This NDSA Virtual Digital Preservation Conference Redux is hosted in partnership with NDSA member organization, Syracuse University Libraries and is offered at NO CHARGE to both NDSA members and non-members.

If you have any questions, please write to us at ndsa [dot] digipres [at] gmail [dot] com. We’re looking forward to seeing you online!

~ The NDSA DigiPres Planning Committee

Announcing the 2023 NDSA Excellence Award Winners

2023 Excellence Award Winners

We are pleased to highlight the 2023 Excellence Awards winners. Awards are divided into six categories: Future Stewards, Educators, Individuals, Organizations, Projects, and Sustainability Activities. Awards were presented at the 2023 Digital Preservation conference.

Read on to learn more about this year’s awardees!

Future Stewards

Future Stewards are recognized as students and early-career professionals or academics taking a creative approach to advancing knowledge of digital preservation issues and practices. This year’s awardee in the Future Stewards category is Sophia van Hoek.

Headshot of Sophia van Hoek

Sophia van Hoek recently graduated at the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam University of the Arts) for her BA in cultural heritage and archival studies. Her thesis research asked how the National Archives of the Netherlands can responsibly reduce the ecological impact of its IT and data storage without sacrificing digital sustainability. Green archiving is a relatively new topic within digital preservation. Sophia’s research can be seen as a practical elaboration of theoretical solutions already proposed. In addition to providing information directly relevant to the National Archives of the Netherlands, Sophia created a Green Digital Manifesto and step-by-step plans for any organization wishing to implement more environmentally sustainable digital preservation practices. As a nominator stated, “Sophia is a true ambassador for this topic and for the broader field of digital preservation.”

Congratulations, Sophia!

Educator Awards

The Educator Awards recognizes academics, trainers, and curricular endeavors promoting effective and inventive approaches to digital preservation education through academic programs, partnerships, professional development opportunities, and curriculum development.

This year’s awardee in the Educator category is Ashley Blewer.

Ashley Blewer (she/her) has been actively creating and contributing to digital preservation educational initiatives for over a decade. She strives to create open educational resources that demystify digital preservation practices and tools. Through professional positions, Ashley has created software and documentation for tools like AtoM, Archivematica, QCTools, MediaInfo, MediaConch, BWF MetaEdit, and DVRescue. Additionally, she has dedicated significant personal time to create dozens of online guides, educational blog posts, training materials, and interactive websites that support digital preservation education and are freely available. Some of these initiatives include resources for the identification of media formats (Media Format Guides), documentation of problems with digitization or digital transfer of media materials (A/V Artifact Atlas), supplemental documentation for difficult-to-understand tools (MediaInfo Parameter Definitions, ffmprovisr), and websites that support the use of digital preservation software (XML validators for PBCore and Archivematica, Collection Management System collection, Minimum Viable Station). Through these distinct efforts, she seeks to facilitate educational opportunities that are more accessible to beginners and supportive to practitioners throughout their careers.

Congratulations, Ashley!

Individual

Individuals are recognized for making a significant contribution to the digital preservation community through advances in theory or practice. This year’s awardee in the Individual category is Stephen Abrams.

Headshot of Stephen Abrams Acknowledged as a “Digital Preservation Pioneer” by the Library of Congress, Stephen Abrams emerged as an early digital stewardship trailblazer and leader. Since the 1990s, his contributions – both practical solutions and theoretical principles – have propelled our field forward and his ability to forge partnerships and surface opportunities has brought to fruition tools and standards our field has used for decades. In the early 2000s, he helped develop the archival PDF format PDF/A. During that time, he also helped design the first instantiation of the file format identification and characterization tool JHOVE, subsequently leading projects such as JHOVE2 and Cobweb, a web archiving registry.

Aside from these tools and standards, he was also an architect in one of the first in-production digital preservation repositories (the DRS at Harvard Library), which was initially launched in 2000. Returning to Harvard in 2018, he secured major grant funding to completely re-think a digital preservation infrastructure for the next generation – ensuring the outputs were shared with the greater community and not simply created within an academic silo.

Stephen possesses creative thinking and diplomacy skills which have been key in forging alliances across organizations, such as the PDF Association, the Digital Preservation Coalition and others. And as his nominator wrote, “Stephen is always looking for opportunities to usher in and advance future generations of digital stewards; never hesitating to bolster others, offer people leadership and growth opportunities, and generously giving credit to his colleagues.”

Congratulations, Stephen!

Organizations

Organizations are recognized for innovative approaches to providing support and guidance to the digital preservation community. This year’s awardee in the Organizations category is Grupo de Preservación Digital.

Group photo of Grupo de Preservación Digital

Formed in 2017 in Mexico, the Grupo de Preservación Digital (GPD) is a multidisciplinary and inter-institutional group that seeks to promote research and training in digital preservation. The group works to address the urgent need for collaboration in research and open discussion integrating diverse perspectives to produce guidelines, good practices, and policies reflecting a broad understanding of substantive tasks in and around the preservation of digital heritage materials. The group has enjoyed continued growth through the participation of not only its members, but many institutions and individuals interested in digital preservation. The GPD divides its work into three basic areas: Digital legal deposit, Research, and Technology- all of which reach the entire Spanish-speaking region. GPD hosts educational events, manages a Knowledge Base offering free access to, articles, books, and video recordings of presentations, created by the GPD, as well as a list of links to other resources.

For their work in continued advocacy for sustainable preservation of digital heritage materials, for their leadership in advancing practices and policies, and for their offering educational opportunities to the digital preservation community, we are glad to present this year’s Organization Award to the Grupo de Preservación Digital.

Congratulations to the Grupo de Preservación Digital team!

Projects

Projects are recognized for activities whose goals or outcomes represent an inventive, meaningful addition to the understanding or processes required for successful, sustainable digital preservation stewardship. This year’s awardee in the Projects category is The Reliable, Robust, and Resilient Digital Infrastructure for Nuclear Decommissioning project.

Zoom screenshot of the members of the Reliable, Robust, and Resilient Digital Infrastructure for Nuclear Decommissioning project team

The project represents a four-year partnership between the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC). The NDA is charged with the complicated task of decommissioning and cleaning the seventeen principal nuclear energy plants in the UK. The work involved the preservation of data with an extended life cycle and significant security requirements. During the initial phase of the project, the team worked to understand legacy systems and data and adapt current systems to ensure long-term viability. In the course of this critical work, the project team not only considered the unique needs of the NDA, but also sought to make connections to the wider digital preservation community. Several resources for digital preservation program assessment and technology watch guides were created and shared in conjunction with the project.

Project team members include Simon Tucker (NDA), Martin Robb (NDA (retired), Michelle Donoghue (NDA), Bob Radford (Magnox), Whitney Smith (Magnox), Gordon Reid (Nucleus), Stephen Beck (Sellafield Ltd), Martin Denvir (Sellafield Ltd), Clare Gallagher, (Nucleus), Jenny Mitcham (DPC), Paul Wheatley (DPC), Michael Popham (DPC).

Congratulations to the NDA project team!

Sustainability

The Sustainability Awards were created to recognize those activities whose goals or outcomes make a significant contribution to operational trustworthiness, monitoring, maintenance, or intervention necessary for sustainable digital preservation stewardship.

This year’s awardees in the Sustainability category are Dr. David S.H. Rosenthal & Victoria Reich.

Headshots of Dr. David S.R. Rosenthal & Victoria Reich.

2023 marks a significant date for the LOCKSS Program: It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the friendly hikes in Joseph Grant State Park and Big Basin where Victoria Reich and Dr. David S.H. Rosenthal first conceived of LOCKSS, “lots of copies keep stuff safe,” as a guiding principle for long-term access and preservation to digital library resources. It is also the twentieth anniversary of the transition of the LOCKSS project from beta testing in 2002 to full production release. In the words of the duo’s nominator, “Even if you don’t know David Rosenthal and Vicky Reich by name, you’ve almost certainly heard their rallying cry for digital preservation: Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. This ethos has informed digital preservation best practices since its introduction, and has shaped the design and implementation of the LOCKSS open-source software.”

David Rosenthal and Vicky Reich’s brainchild—and the enduring preservation networks that it has made possible—was at the leading edge of a global wave of digital preservation initiatives in the early 21st century. The effectiveness and reliability of LOCKSS software has been validated through rigorous third-party evaluation, including ongoing certification of the CLOCKSS archive as a trustworthy digital repository under the TRAC standard since 2014. The LOCKSS project has provided enduring proof of the concept that large-scale digital preservation work can be accomplished cost-effectively and with community benefits (not vendor profits) as the primary driver.

Rosenthal and Reich’s work on LOCKSS stands as a benchmark against which other approaches to digital preservation and persistent access to digital resources are measured.

Congratulations to all!

Excellence Awards Working Group

The 2023 NDSA Excellence Awards Working Group was led by co-chairs Kari May (University of Pittsburgh Libraries) and Matt McEniry (Texas Tech University Libraries), with members Julie Allen (Open Preservation Foundation), Chris Banuelos (Rice University Libraries), Sarah Middleton (Digital Preservation Coalition Representative), Dorothea Salo (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Jessica Venlet (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries). Aliya Reich at CLIR provided administrative support for the entire awards process. In addition to information about the Excellence Awards group, the group’s website provides information on past winners.

NDSA Strategic Partnership Office Hours at iPRES

If you’re attending iPRES next week, come find NDSA on September 20th, 2:20-3:00pm in HH3! Representatives from NDSA will be holding office hours where members of other digital preservation communities are encouraged to drop in to discuss options for working together.

NDSA is looking for strategic partners across digital preservation, repository, and open infrastructure communities to work towards a common goal of advancing and advocating for digital stewardship. We are interested in exploring partnerships for conferencing, training, outreach, and advocacy, as well as having discussions around how best to align the efforts of digital preservation communities and membership organizations.

We will have ways for both in-person and virtual attendees to participate. We hope to see you there!

Mini-Job Fair at NDSA DigiPres 2023

While large professional organizations like ALA and SAA have organized job fairs to coincide with conferences, NDSA hasn’t yet done this, until now. After noticing people recruiting at digital preservation conferences in the past year, I began to think why not? Well, one good reason is that NDSA is not a dues-collecting professional organization and doesn’t have the same resources or capacity of ALA or SAA. It falls to individuals at member institutions to propose ideas and so I submitted a vague proposal that necessarily did not contain a lot of details. When it was accepted, I immediately realized that I needed help, even for a “mini” job fair and enlisted Robin Ruggaber, also a past NDSA Coordinating Committee Chair, to help pull it off. This blog post describes our vision for this session.

In the coming months, Robin and I will be scouring listservs and job boards and reaching out to employers to identify five open jobs that can be highlighted during the session. We hope to represent different types of employers, such as higher education, government, service providers, and other cultural heritage organizations, small and large; and different types of jobs involving digital preservation skills such as, digital preservation librarian, preservation infrastructure engineer, digital archivist, or service manager. Preference will be given to employers that disclose pay, demonstrate a commitment to hiring and retaining a diverse and welcoming workforce, and to organizations that promote employee wellbeing. If you are or are planning to recruit for a digital preservation position during the time of the conference and are interested in participating, please contact Nathan Tallman (ntt7@psu.edu) or Robin Ruggaber (robin.ruggaber@virginia.edu).

Each of these five jobs will be presented to the audience, hopefully by someone from the hiring organization. Presenters will be asked to share the expected impacts of a successful candidate within one week, one month, and one year of hire. Other details we expect to be shared include salary range, examples of how required and preferred qualifications may be met, and how to apply. No interviews are planned as part of this event. If there is extra time, other employers will be able to engage the audience in position design for anticipated digital preservation jobs.

But that’s not all! In addition to highlighting five open jobs, Robin and I will recruit digital preservation managers willing to review resumes/CVs and coach applicants conducting a job search. We hope there will be enough space in Regency A to allow both activities to occur concurrently, but if needed resume/CV review and job coaching may occur throughout the venue.

These are our goals for this session. Our ability to be successful largely depends on the job market this fall and the availability of digital preservation hiring managers during the conference. Some of these details might change for practical reasons as Robin and I carry out planning and logistics, but we are optimistic. As NDSA grows, more organizations are looking to hire. We hope this session will help make connections between people and employers and set a precedent in our community.

Please join us on November 15th, 2:30-3:30pm in Regency A.

~ Nathan Tallman, Past NDSA Coordinating Committee Chair

Catching up with past NDSA Excellence Awards Winners: Dr. Dinesh Katre!

The NDSA Individual Excellence Award honors individuals making significant contributions to the digital preservation community. In 2019, Dr. Dinesh Katre was one of two awardees in this category. Dr. Katre was recognized for his work to advocate for and deploy the Indian National Digital Preservation Programme which provides a robust and comprehensive platform for the effective long-term preservation of digital materials. As Chief Investigator of the Programme’s flagship project to establish a Center of Excellence for Digital Preservation,

Headshot of Dr. Dinesh Katre, Senior Director & Head of Department, Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), Pune, INDIA.

Dr. Katre led the process to develop a digital preservation standard for India. He also conceptualized, designed and led the development of DIGITĀLAYA, a software framework, which comprehensively implements the OAIS reference model. Katre’s efforts culminated in the first repository in the world to achieve ISO 16363 certification.

We recently caught up with Dr. Katre to learn more about the progress of his work on the Indian National Digital Preservation program and other projects over the last few years.

1) What have you been doing since receiving an NDSA Excellence Award?

I have spearheaded the working group constituted by Supreme Court of India, which has defined the Digital Preservation Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the Indian Judiciary which provides coverage for Supreme Court of India, 25 High Courts and 672 District Courts. The SOP provides guidelines and recommendations with regard to Information Governance (IG) policies for courts, digitization of judicial records, cloud infrastructure for establishing Judicial Digital Repositories, tools and technologies, standards, AI/ML based applications to leverage upon massive data repositories to modernize the Indian Judiciary for accelerating the justice delivery. Most interestingly, we conducted 5 rounds of surveys across all high courts and district courts to collect information on various aspects of digitization. Huge amount of data was collected and analyzed for developing the insights. I am pleased to inform that the Digital Preservation Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been approved by honorable Chief Justice of India and sanctioned by the Law Ministry for implementation across the judiciary. The SOP is available at the following URL: https://ecommitteesci.gov.in/document/digital-preservation/

2) What did receiving the NDSA award mean to you?

I have worked extensively towards establishing the Indian National Digital Preservation Program since 2008, which involved development of archival systems, tools, standards, and digital repositories to comply as per the ISO 16363. As a part of my research, I had organized an Indo-US workshop to study the international trends in digital preservation in collaboration with the experts from National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the Library of Congress. I knew that National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) was originally launched by NDIIPP in 2010. Therefore, it was an immensely inspiring and encouraging moment for me to receive the NDSA Individual Innovation Award in 2019.

3) What efforts/advances of the last few years have you been impressed with or admired in the field of data stewardship and/or digital preservation?

I am particularly impressed with the advances in Digital Humanities and Computational Archival Science (CAS) which leverage upon artificial Intelligence/machine learning technologies to enable automation of digital preservation procedures and knowledge extraction from the digital repositories.

4) How has your work evolved since you won the Excellence Award?

The NDSA award infused me with a great deal of confidence and courage to embrace the evolving technological landscape. Since then, I have initiated R & D on the development of intelligent archiving tools for automatic metadata extraction, ontology-based classification of records, document orientation detection, visual entity tagging in miniature paintings and information extraction from documents.

5) What do you currently see as some of the biggest challenges or opportunities in digital preservation?

Whether proprietary or open source, the major challenge is heterogeneity and inconsistency in the properties of file formats. The digital preservation domain has been relying on open-source file formats but we must understand that they are primarily evolved for the purpose of interoperability. Therefore, a wider consensus is required for defining comprehensive “Universally Intelligible & Interoperable File Formats (UNIIFormats, a term coined by me) for all major types of contents, which would be specially designed for the purpose of digital preservation. The proposed UNIIFormats should provide built-in support for self-description, knowledge markup, semantic linkability, searchability, accessibility, discoverability, authenticity, and backward & forward compatibility. One should have a choice of storing information in the proposed UNIIFormat, if it requires long term retention. Incorporating so many properties into a file format may sound a bit utopian but I feel that there has not been much evolution and advancement in the file formats as compared with other technological advancements.

Presently, producing these properties for the data requires you to avail separate, fragmented, and paid application services. It may be beneficial for business but detrimental for preserving the digital footprint of the human civilization. Post-processing of the data for preservation is very laborious, costly, prone to loss of information, errors, and mis-interpretation.

We also require to use AI ML techniques for creating knowledge services to leverage the massive data repositories, which can help in long term sustenance.

You may like to refer my presentation on “Digital Eternity: Innovating a Future for the Past” which is available at the following URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpr4ypE88qI&t=3047s

6) Are you working on any new digital preservation related projects at the moment?

I am presently leading the Digital Preservation for the Indian Judiciary initiative and Digital Preservation of Sanskrit Encyclopedic Dictionary project which is supported under the Science & Heritage Research Initiative (SHRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Now Accepting Nominations for the NDSA 2023 Excellence Awards

Nominations are now being accepted for the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) 2023 Excellence Awards!

The biennial NDSA Excellence Awards (previously the annual Innovation Awards) were established to recognize and encourage exemplary achievement in the field of digital preservation stewardship at a level of national or international importance. Seeking to highlight and commend all forms of creative and meaningful contributions in the field of digital preservation, this working group accepts nominations for individuals, educators, future stewards, organizations, projects, and sustainability activities categories. Acknowledging that exemplary digital stewardship can take many forms, eligibility for these awards has been left purposely broad. Anyone, any institution, or any project acting in the context of the categories listed below can be nominated for an award. No NDSA membership or affiliation is required. Self-nomination is accepted and encouraged, as are submissions reflecting the needs and accomplishments of historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Awards categories are:

Individual Award: Recognizing those individuals making a significant contribution to the digital preservation community through advances in theory or practice.
Educator Award: Recognizing academics, trainers, and curricular endeavors promoting effective and inventive approaches to digital preservation education through academic programs, partnerships, professional development opportunities, and curriculum development.
Future Steward Award: Recognizing students and early-career professionals making an impact on advancing knowledge and practice of digital preservation stewardship.
Organization Award: Recognizing those organizations providing support, guidance, advocacy, or leadership for the digital preservation community.
Project Award: Recognizing those activities whose goals or outcomes make a significant contribution or strategic or conceptual understanding necessary for successful digital preservation stewardship.
Sustainability Award: Recognizing those activities whose goals or outcomes make a significant contribution to operational trustworthiness, monitoring, maintenance, or intervention necessary for sustainable digital preservation stewardship.

The NDSA is an organization consisting of a diverse international membership sharing a commitment to digital preservation. The development and support of a broad range of successful digital preservation activities is key to the future of digital stewardship. We encourage all members of the international digital preservation community to help us highlight and reward distinctive approaches to the challenges of digital preservation by submitting nominations for worthy candidates here: 2023 NDSA Excellence Awards Nominations.

Nominations will be accepted until Friday, August 4, 2023.

Awards will be presented on November 15th as part of the Opening Plenary session at the 2023 NDSA Digital Preservation conference in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

Attendance at the conference is encouraged but not required for awardees or nominators.

Information and details on awards from previous years is available on the Excellence Awards webpage.

NDSA Digital Preservation Conference (DigiPres23) Call for Proposals

The NDSA is pleased to announce that the Call for Proposals (CFP) is now open for Digital Preservation 2023: Communities of Time and Place (#DigiPres23) to be held November 15-16, 2023 in person in St. Louis, Missouri at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel.

Submissions from members and nonmembers alike are welcome, and you can learn more about session format options through the CFP. The deadline to submit proposals is May 1, 2023 at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. Learn more about the conference itself on the Digital Preservation conference website.

View the CFP and Submit

Digital Preservation 2023 (#DigiPres23) is held in partnership with NDSA’s host organization, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) who is sponsoring a series of events including the 2023 DLF Forum (November 13-15) and associated workshop series Learn@DLF (November 12). CLIR, DLF, and NDSA strive to create a safe, accessible, welcoming, and inclusive event, and adheres to DLF’s Code of Conduct.

We look forward to seeing you at DigiPres23!

~ 2023 DigiPres Planning Committee

NDSA 2022 Year in Review

As we begin 2023 we wanted to take a moment to look back at NDSA activities over the past year. Please take a look at the things we’ve accomplished and think about how you can participate this year!

NDSA Leadership

This summer, NDSA Leadership went through an facilitated exercise to discuss NDSA strategy and how we engage with the marketplace of digital preservation service providers. One result of this exercise is a refreshed NDSA Foundational Strategy, which includes tweaks to our mission and vision statements, adds Transparency and Openness as values, and now includes operating principles based on our values. These new principles will be used as guidestones as we conclude this work on service provider engagement. In October, NDSA sponsored an open conversation on the Ithaka S+R report, The Effectiveness and Durability of Digital Preservation and Curation Systems. This conversation provided space for the community to react to the report and discuss its implications, you can read a summary on the NDSA News blog.

Membership Updates

Following our new quarterly membership review process, we welcomed a total of 15 new members, with 5 of those being international members from Africa (3), Iceland, and Mexico. We look forward to working with and learning from our new members.

As existing members, the new year is a good time to make sure your organization’s contact information is up to date. A simple form is available to assist with this process.

Interest Groups

Content Interest Group

During 2022 one of our co-chairs, Deb Verhoff stepped down and we welcomed Deon Schutte who now, together with Brenda Burk leads the content interest group.
Nathan Tallman spoke to us about appraisal and selection for digital preservation at our first meeting in February.
At our May meeting we officially said goodbye to Deb Verhoff and had an interesting discussion about the new forms of content that are created in news organizations and the implications thereof for digital preservation.
Dealing with content that has both cultural and ethical concerns, as well as offensive content was the topic of the presentation and discussion led by the University of Cape Town during the August meeting. Andrea Walker, an archivist from the University of Cape Town spoke to us about an ongoing digital curation project involving the ǂKhomani San.
Our last meeting of 2022 was a casual affair with new members to the NDSA (those who joined in 2022) coming to tell us about themselves and their organizations. We look forward to interacting with and learning from them during 2023.

Infrastructure Interest Group

In 2022, the Infrastructure Interest Group met quarterly and focused on exploring topics of common interest through invited presentations, solution sessions where members bring their challenges and questions to the group, article discussions, and an in person event at DigiPres2022. Topics explored included:

Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) and Implementation presented by Andrew Woods, Princeton University
Geographic Distribution in Cloud Environments
- Presentation “Calculating the Costs of Redundant Storage” by Martha Anderson, University of Arkansas
- Presentation and facilitated discussion on distributed cloud storage by Leslie Johnson, Director of Digital Preservation at NARA
Discussion post review of:
- The Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values put forth by the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative
- Preservica’s Charter for Long-Term Digital Preservation Sustainability
Solution Discussion Topics
- Non-public sharing of digital born materials
- Potential use of W3C’s Screen Capture for digital preservation
- Secondary server storage

Standards and Practice Interest Group

Standards and Practices welcomed a new co-chair, Ann Hanlon (UWM), who joined continuing co-chair, Felicity Dykas.
The Standards and Practices Interest Group held quarterly meetings, with the following agendas:.
- January: A presentation by Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig, Digital Archivist at the Smithsonian, on preservation standards for digital video files. It was well attended and provided quite a bit of useful information.
- April: A working session to identify glossaries that address terminology used in digital preservation. This will be re-reviewed and posted in 2023.
- July: We discussed staffing for digital preservation, using two slides from the Staffing Survey questionnaire as a jumping off point. Attendees expressed challenges with staffing, and noted different staffing models.
- October: We ended the year with a presentation on the Digital Preservation Coalition Competency Audit Toolkit (DPC CAT) given by Amy Currie and Sharon McMeekin of DPC. We appreciated the preview on the Toolkit, which was publicly released shortly after the meeting.

Working Groups

Communication and Publications Working Group

The Communications and Publications group works to support Leadership and co-chairs of the Interest and Working groups through creating documentation, updating the website, and posting to social media and the NDSA blog. The items below are highlights of completed activities in 2022.

DigiPres Conference Organization Committee

The 2022 DigiPres Conference was held October 12-13 in Baltimore, Maryland. Highlights from the conference can be found in this wrap-up post. The opening plenary video will be released soon, keep your eyes open for an announcement.
A virtual session to accommodate additional sessions from the 2022 Conference is being planned for February 2023.
The 2023 DigiPres Conference will be held at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri on November 15-16.

Excellence Awards Working Group

In line with our new working agreement with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), only the DPC Digital Preservation Awards were awarded in 2022. In 2023, the NDSA Excellence Awards will be presented at the annual Digital Preservation conference.
If you are interested in participating in this group, keep your eyes out for a call for participation!

Levels of Digital Preservation

The steering group has established a Levels of Preservation ‘office hour’. This is held once every 2 months and provides a forum for members of the community to drop in and discuss the Levels and ask questions. Specific topics covered within these sessions include a focus on community archives and their use of the levels and a discussion about documentation. Do come along to future ‘office hour’ sessions – we would love to see you there! (See the NDSA Calendar of Events for specific dates)
We were excited to cheer the Levels of Preservation all the way to the quarter finals of World Cup of Digital Preservation! Unfortunately they were beaten in the semi-finals by PRONOM which then went on to win the tournament!
A Dutch translation of the NDSA Levels has been published. A big thank you to Lotte Wijsman for providing this!
The group continues to respond to comment and feedback on the Levels. Do use our feedback form if you would like to share your thoughts on the Levels and associated resources with the steering group.

Membership Working Group

A newly formed Membership Working Group grew out of the 2021 Membership Task Force, which conducted a survey on a wide range of membership issues, and published a report on their findings.
We will build our work around the findings of the report published by the Membership Task Force.
If you are interested in joining this working group, we are still recruiting participants, please see our call to get involved!

Staffing Survey

The 2021 Staffing Survey Report was published in August. The report documents survey responses from 269 individuals, covering topics such as digital preservation activities and staffing qualifications. Additional information for review, including the Survey codebook and data files, are also available in the NDSA OSF.
In September, members of the Staffing Survey Working Group presented a peer-reviewed panel presentation at iPres in Glasgow, Scotland. A short paper is available in the conference proceedings (p. 424). An additional presentation at the DigiPres conference in October led to an engaging audience conversation about digital preservation staffing.

Web Archiving Survey

The Web Archiving Survey Group was re-established to refresh the survey which was last distributed in 2017
190 survey responses were received — 72.6% from institutions and individuals in the United States, and 27.4% from international institutions and individuals
The report is currently being worked on and we are aiming for a Spring 2023 release!

NDSA’s Digital Preservation Virtual Event!

NDSA will be hosting a virtual event on February 23, 2023, for those presenters who were unable to participate in the in-person conference in Baltimore last fall. The event, held in collaboration with our host organization, CLIR, will consist of panels and presentations and will take place over Zoom Events. The schedule for this event is available on the website while information regarding registration is forthcoming. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us for this special online event! All sessions will be free and open to the public.

CLIR will also host virtual presentations in April; more information about that program can be found on the DLF Forum Virtual Sessions web page.