Members – NDSA Blog

NDSA Welcomes One New Member in Quarter 3 of 2024

As of September 2024, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome one new applicant into the membership. Please join me in welcoming our new member! To review our list of members, you can see them here.

The Archive and Heritage Digital Curation Group

In their application, The Archive and Heritage Digital Curation Group noted that they are “a specialised consulting services that ensure that your archival processes meet regulatory compliance and standards.” They continued to note that, “We provide comprehensive support in archiving, records management, metadata management, disaster preparedness, and environment scanning to safeguard your valuable collections. Both from a IT systems and Archives and Records Management perspective. We also do digitisation from equipment to physical digitisation, collection building and storage.”

NDSA Welcomes Two New Members in Quarter 3 of 2023

As of September 2023, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome its two most recent applicants into the membership. Each new member brings a host of skills and experience to our group. 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.

~ Bethany Scott, NDSA Coordinating Committee Vice-Chair

Loras College Center for Dubuque History

The Center for Dubuque History is home to many rare images, documents, and AV materials, and they are committed to making them more accessible through digitization. They are still in the early stages of this process, but after attending a Digital POWRR Institute, they are on their way and are eager to join a group where they can both learn and share our experiences with others as they gain expertise.

Open Preservation Foundation

The Open Preservation Foundation are a global not-for-profit membership organization working to advance shared standards and solutions for the long-term preservation of digital content. Through the development of open source tools, they enable memory institutions to preserve their digital collections. Two of their staff are already contributing to NDSA by being part of the DigiPres Program Committee.

NDSA Welcomes Four New Members in Quarter Two of 2023

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.

NDSA Welcomes Three New Members this First Quarter of 2023

As of March 2023, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome its three most recent applicants into the membership. Each new member brings a host of skills and experience to our group. 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.

James Madison University

James Madison University Libraries is formally building out their digital preservation program and working closely with AV materials from our Special Collections. They also recognize the pressing need to more strategically engage with web archiving, to capture more fully the complete context of the creative and scholarly activities from our communities. They are developing integrations between their preservation system and their discovery and description systems, and look forward to being part of NDSA to more comprehensively engage with the wider community on these points.

Namibia University of Science and Technology

The Namibia University of Science and Technology Library Digital Collections is responsible for the acquisition, arrangement, description, indexing, storage, disposal, and dissemination of NUST’s historically valuable institutional documents such as study programmes, past exam papers, annual reports, VHS tapes that have been converted to mp4 videos, audio and images taken during NUST events. Through joining the NDSA, they plan to benchmark and explore more ways to ensure long-term preservation and access for this valuable content.

Syracuse University Libraries

While Syracuse University Libraries has been committed to confronting the implications, challenges, and rewards of digital preservation for many years, they have more recently formalized this commitment. In 2021, they established a new Department of Digital Stewardship, which signals both their commitment to digital stewardship in all its forms, providing support to digital scholarship by centering activities of digital production, provision of access, description, object management, and digital preservation. This new department also provides an organizational framework and locus for this activity at Syracuse University Libraries. By joining NDSA, Syracuse University Libraries furthers its commitment and capacity to this work.

Join us for NDSA Membership Listening Forums

We want to hear from you — whether you’re an NDSA member or not — about your experiences with the NDSA. The NDSA Membership Working Group invites you to attend one of the two listening forums on March 8th at 10am EST/9am CST/7am PST and March 22nd at 2pm EST/1pm CST/11am PST.

Following our 2021 survey, part of the Membership Working Group’s charge has been to gather more data on your thoughts on types of memberships, moving to a paid membership model, and how NDSA could improve membership experiences. Your comments are crucial to our work moving forward and improving the NDSA membership experience.

Please register for March 8th here.

Please register for March 22nd here.

If you cannot make either session, please feel free to write your thoughts on the jamboard using the sticky note feature.

~ The NDSA Membership Working Group

NDSA Welcomes Six New Members

As of 13 September 2022, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome its six most recent applicants into the membership. Each new member brings a host of skills and experience to our group. 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.

~ Hannah Wang, Vice Chair of the NDSA Coordinating Committee

Africa Media Online

Africa Media Online operates a digital trade route enabling the custodians of African collections to get those collections from the cupboard to the audience they want to reach while maintaining custodianship over those collections. Their vision is to enable Africans to tell Africa’s story. The digital trade route includes: training, consulting, digitization service, digital preservation, and licensing.

Archives of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age

The Archives of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age, which will be linked to the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University, takes as its subject the emerging publications, organizations, and activities initiated by a new generation of young American Jews who on their own responded to the cultural trends, political concerns, and technology of the twenty-first century. Because of the nature of digital technology, this project offers an opportunity to show that what will be history in the future can be captured in the present with historical consciousness.

Botswana International University of Science and Technology Library

Botswana International University of Science and Technology is a relatively young university having started operating ten years ago. The university library is therefore still developing and is interested in participating in any endeavor that ensures that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable to its users. As a growing library that has to make do with a shrinking budget, digital preservation is very important to them in ensuring that whatever valuable information they have is preserved for continued access and use. The library has started a project called “Presidential collection @BIUST” that seeks to preserve the legacy of the sitting and former presidents of Botswana through digitization of such content.

El Colegio de México

El Colegio de México is a Mexican institute of higher education, specializing in teaching and research in social sciences and humanities. The library is actively creating a digital preservation unit.

Milwaukee County Historical Society

As one of, if not the, largest repository for Milwaukee County history, the Milwaukee County Historical Society is committed to improving their digital preservation and accessibility efforts. With over a million photos in the collection along with thousands of manuscript collections, documents, and other assorted records, MCHS is embarking on efforts to digitize and make available as much material as possible. As part of this effort, they strive to learn, implement, and collaborate on the best possible practices for a repository of our size and nature. Digitization projects for both preservation and accessibility include photos, naturalization records, manuscripts, and books and ledgers of historical importance.

Tuskegee University

The Tuskegee University Archives includes material documenting the history and growth of Tuskegee University, the Civil Rights movement, and general history of Afro-Americana. Books (including faculty publications), manuscripts, Tuskegee University periodicals and newspapers, ephemera, photographic images, disc and tape recordings, and other archival items are available for research under supervised conditions.

NDSA Welcomes Four New Members

As of 8 March 2022, 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. 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.

Quantum Corp

Quantum Corp’s goal is to be the leading provider of management and storage services for unstructured data. They mainly focus on designing solutions to address the problems associated with managing and the storage of large data repositories and archives.

University of Cape Town Libraries

University of Cape Town Libraries is particularly interested in growing broad-based general awareness, basic understanding, and active participation in their digital preservation systems & services for the university as a whole. Their burgeoning network of Data Stewards & Champions, an interdisciplinary community of practice working to develop and maintain a vibrant, sustainable data culture, is an important vehicle for this.

Vanderbilt University Library

Vanderbilt University Library is interested in learning from others’ digital stewardship experiences as well as sharing theirs with the NDSA community. The Library currently holds digital archives with audiovisual, textual, and image-based content. They are using several different systems to archive them, including Glacier, ArchivesSpace, Archivematica, Fedora, and Portico. The Library preserves a number of collections, including the TVNews archive and Vanderbilt yearbooks.

WiLS (Wisconsin Library Services, Inc.)

WiLS is a non-profit membership organization that facilitates collaboration and innovation in order to advance library service in the state of Wisconsin and beyond. Since 2005, WiLS has provided consortium management and leadership for the Recollection Wisconsin statewide digital collections program. Notable and recent WiLS digital stewardship projects and initiatives include Recollection Wisconsin’s Curating Community Digital Collections program (IMLS), the Digital Readiness Community of Practice implementation project (NHPRC), mentorship of two national cohorts of tribal libraries engaged in community memory projects (through the IMLS’s Accelerating Promising Practices initiative), and their work with the Ho-Chunk Nation and other Wisconsin tribal communities to increase their capacity in digital collections development and management.

~ Hannah Wang, Vice Chair of the NDSA Coordinating Committee

Announcing Member Contact Update Form and Update on Membership Status

NDSA membership contacts are the main point of contact if questions arise about the NDSA membership. These people also receive emails about the annual Coordinating Committee election and any other official correspondence the NDSA Leadership may have. To help keep these contacts up to date, the NDSA has been working on developing a way for organizations to let us know when their Program Representative or Authorized Signatory contact needs to be updated. We have developed a form for you to fill out to provide us with correct information.

To assist NDSA with managing memberships, emails from contacts that bounce back more than once from organizations with multiple contacts will be automatically removed from the membership contact list. Effort will be made to reach out to organizations without multiple contacts that have emails bouncing back, however if no response is received NDSA reserves the right to remove this organization from the current membership list until such time as the organization is able to provide new contacts.

If you would like to know who your contacts are please reach out to ndsa.digipres [at] gmail.com and we will be happy to provide you with that information.

This information, instructions, and the form are also available on the Member Orientation webpage. There is also a link to the form on the Join the NDSA webpage.

~ The NDSA Leadership Team

NDSA Welcomes Eight New Members

As of 17 September 2021, the NDSA Leadership unanimously voted to welcome its eight most recent applicants into the membership. Each new member brings a host of skills and experience to our group. 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.

Botanical Research Institute of Texas

The Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BIRT) was founded with an institutional commitment to the preservation and dissemination of botanical knowledge. BRIT’s core collection is the Herbarium which holds almost 1.5 million preserved plant specimens. Approximately 70% of this collection has been digitally imaged and is continually growing through ongoing digitization efforts. These specimen images and data are disseminated through data portals such as TORCH and SERNEC and preserved through partnerships with the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas and CyVerse.

Oklahoma State University Library

The Oklahoma State University Library has been dedicated to digital preservation for over two decades, beginning with efforts to preserve and make accessible online Charles Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Digital preservation efforts were first enacted by the Library’s Electronic Publishing Center (EPC, 2000-2008), but larger initiatives were soon in place throughout the Library. Another major contributor in the digital preservation area has been the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, which was founded in 2007 and has been fully digital since its inception.

NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS)

The New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) manages formats dating 1640-2020 and 500 TB of both digitized and born digital material. A team of 8 permanent staff are dedicated to digitizing collections at a growth rate of 150TB per year. DORIS is preparing to ingest ~200 TB of born digital government material with the mayoral changeover in January 2022. Since 2017, DORIS has used BitCurator for reviewing and ingesting born-digital content from city agencies.

Amistad Research Center

The Amistad Research Center (ARC) has been digitizing archives and manuscripts, photographs and text for online access and digital exhibitions for a number of years. In partnership with Adam Matthews Digital and other library vendors, one record collection has been digitized with interest in digitizing other collections housed here. Additionally, ARC established over the last decade a robust audiovisual reformatting program with the ability to digitize most audio and some video formats in house, while outsourcing film collections or U-matic videotapes as funding is acquired. ARC is now exploring long-term cloud storage solutions for our high quality access and digital master files, as well as the funding required to maintain such storage.

University of Dubuque Charles C. Myers Library

The Charles C. Myers Library manages its preservation environment using open-source, on-site, and off-site, and cloud technologies. The library curates digital exhibitions featuring minority populations in the aviation field and underrepresented groups on campus over the last 100 years at the university.

University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Libraries

At the University of Arkansas Fayetteville Libraries there are two units that participate in various levels of digital preservation. The Digital Services Department provides various stage levels of digital preservation depending on the collection scope and grant agreements for digitization. Special Collections, which also houses the University Archives, performs a detailed digital preservation process.

The African American Research Library and Cultural Center

The Broward County African American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC) is a public research library. Their digitization and digital preservation efforts hope to create access and awareness of content in their collection which focuses on Black history and life. AARLCC is also using 3D scanning for artifacts. As a Black collecting library and archive, another area of interest is the work of web archiving for Black collecting institutions. AARLCC has co-created the Archiving the Black Web initiative to support efforts of similar Black collecting organizations and to begin to document and preserve content on the web related to Black history and life.

Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada

The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph is a consolidated archive committed to following best practices in ensuring both born-digital records received through transfer or donation and analogue records which have been digitized for preservation or outreach purposes, are preserved long-term. The Congregation has built an in-house digital preservation system using free and open source software, following the OAIS model and strives to achieve the highest NDSA levels of preservation over time.

~Nathan Tallman, NDSA Vice Chair

Call for Volunteers: NDSA Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment

The NDSA Leadership group is spinning up a new group around NDSA Membership and invites you to consider volunteering for the Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment. The focus of the Task Force will be to examine membership engagement, benefits/drawbacks of the current model type, and recruitment efforts of the NDSA. Through research and surveying members of the consortium, a primary goal of the Task Force is to provide recommendations that will move the NDSA towards a culture that is more inclusive, collaborative, intentional, and that has well defined metrics around recruitment and engagement. If interested, please complete the form, which can be found here by March 5, 2021.

~ Jes Neal