Tag: NDSA

Call for Nominations to the NDSA Coordinating Committee

NDSA will be electing three members to its Coordinating Committee (CC) this year, with terms starting in January 2024. CC members serve a three year term, participate in a monthly call, and meet at the annual Digital Preservation Conference. The Coordinating Committee provides strategic leadership to the organization in coordination with group co-chairs. NDSA is a diverse community with a critical mission, and we seek candidates to join the CC that bring a variety of cultures and orientations, skills, perspectives and experiences, to bear on leadership initiatives. Working on the CC is an opportunity to contribute your leadership for the community as a whole, while collaborating with a wonderful group of dynamic and motivated professionals. 

If you are interested in joining the NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC) or want to nominate another member, please complete the nomination form by 11:59pm EDT Friday, September 8, 2023, which asks for the name, e-mail address, brief bio/candidate statement (nominee-approved), and NDSA-affiliated institution of the nominee. We particularly encourage and welcome nominations of people from underrepresented groups and sectors. 

As members of the NDSA, we join together to form a consortium of more than 270 partnering organizations, including businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, professional associations and universities, all engaged in the long-term preservation of digital information. Committed to preserving access to our national digital heritage, we each offer our diverse skills, perspectives, experiences, cultures and orientations to achieve what we could not do alone. 

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. More information about the duties and responsibilities of CC members can be found at the NDSA’s Leadership Page.

We hope you will give this opportunity serious consideration and we value your continued contributions and leadership in our community.

Any questions can be directed to ndsa.digipres@gmail.com. 

Thank you,

Bethany Scott, Vice 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).

National Libraries and the Levels of Digital Preservation

This post is a follow up to the summary post about the survey the NDSA Levels Steering committee released this spring, with the hope of being able to better understand the different scenarios under which institutions deploy the NDSA Levels. 

While the response rate was very modest, with only twelve individuals/institutions filling out the survey by the deadline date. We noted that among those twelve were three national libraries. Overall, the three national libraries have in common an organizational/conceptual disposition toward the levels. In one case, the NDSA Levels are used as a “planning tool” to aid with development of digital preservation policies. In another, levels serve as a “maturity modeling tool” to help articulate functional preparedness for digital preservation tasks. And in another, the Levels serve as a “conceptual framework” that undergirds a three-year Digital Preservation Strategic Plan. 

As a very small sample of non-representational institutions, it might seem like a stretch to zero in on how national libraries are using the Levels. But consider – national libraries are often the ones setting policy for everyone else. And so their common use of a particular rubric is helpful to note, alongside their uses of other tools to fill in some of the gaps they consider not covered by the NDSA Levels. Because that’s not all they’re using! Other tools mentioned included TRAC, OAIS, and PREMIS, as well as the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) to track progress and for continuous improvement. 

Environmental impact also emerges as a key area for more attention. Two of the three national libraries take environmental impact into account when considering their digital preservation activities. But the NDSA Levels don’t provide adequate guidance in this area, according to comments. In two cases, environmental impact is only considered when looking at bitstream preservation, and the process of evaluating environmental impact is still in its early stages. Given our growing awareness of the impact of multiple copies and other high-bandwidth activities on carbon output, and the increasingly immediate need for institutions to grapple with both preservation and impact, perhaps this is an area for reassessment at a high level, with additional input from policy-setting institutions like national libraries. 

We plan to continue checking out the results of our survey and share any compelling findings. Do you have insights about the NDSA Levels and how you use them? Please reach out to the “Levellers” group! We would love to hear from you.

As a reminder, our next open session is on August 16th at 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM.  The topic will be discussing the idea of environmental sustainability in regards to the Levels of Digital Preservation.  We are keen to hear how the community would like us to engage with this topic and if there is any work required to update the Levels with this in mind.

Finding out more about the use of the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation

During March-April of 2023 the NDSA Levels Steering Group has been finding out more about how the community uses the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation.

We put out a set of questions within a Google Form and invited the wider community to respond to a range of different scenarios, allowing them to describe how they use the Levels in practice. 

Though only a small number of responses were received (15 in total), there is some really interesting information included about how the Levels are used by a range of different organizations, from National Libraries, to universities and smaller community archives. This blog post summarizes some of the information that has been gathered and is the first in a series of posts on the results.

The answers to four of the scenarios are discussed in turn in this blog post.

Do you use the NDSA Levels once (for your organization as a whole) or do you use it multiple times, perhaps focusing on different departments, different types of content or different collections?

This scenario was designed to find out about the granularity at which the NDSA Levels are used and was answered by 13 people. Most of the answers to this question stated that the Levels are used just once (for the whole organization) rather than separately for different departments or types of content. It was noted by one respondent that they scope their assessment to cover only the content that is preserved in their repository and not unmanaged content that may be held in other locations across their organization. One respondent however did state that when they first used the Levels they used them multiple times for different parts of their digital collections (for example, separate assessments for digitized content, born digital archives and web archives), but also noted that on the second self-assessment, for strategic reasons, this was performed at organizational level. Another two respondents noted that they had not used the Levels in this way yet, but anticipated using them multiple times for different collections or content types in the future.

It was also noted of course that many organizations do use the Levels multiple times, but this is to check in and see how things have changed after a period of time has passed, rather than to do multiple assessments at the same point in time. This theme is explored further in another of the scenarios and a blog on this will be available at a later date.

 

Does your organization use the NDSA Levels alongside other digital preservation maturity models and/or certification standards? Describe how the NDSA Levels is used as part of a wider process of continuous improvement within your organization.

With this scenario, we were interested to find out a bit more about how the Levels are used as part of the wider process of continuous improvement, and whether they are used alongside other models and certification standards. It was interesting to see the range of other standards and models that were mentioned by the respondents to this question.

Of the 11 respondents, 2 simply replied in the negative, of those who provided more detail of the tools they used, two mentioned OAIS, one mentioned TRAC and one mentioned PREMIS. The DiAGRAM tool from The National Archives UK was also mentioned by one respondent and another mentioned previous use of a maturity model developed for the National and State Libraries Australasia.

Six respondents reported that they had used the DPC’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) alongside the NDSA Levels. Of those who mentioned using NDSA Levels alongside DPC RAM a variety of scenarios emerged. One mentioned that they primarily use DPC RAM for tracking and continuous improvement, with the NDSA Levels serving as a more ad hoc reference. Another noted that though they have tried DPC RAM and may use it in the future, the NDSA Levels are a better fit for their current needs. One respondent noted that having completed an NDSA levels assessment in the past helped to frame a follow on assessment done with DPC RAM.

In terms of how organizations use the NSDA Levels for continuous improvement, one respondent noted that they have used their observations from the NDSA levels to determine which areas need work and which would be easiest or most impactful to focus on. Another notes that they use the Levels alongside standards like TRAC, OAIS, and PREMIS, checking against all of these standards when updating policy. 

 

Do you use the NDSA Levels to help project the financial cost or staff time needed to achieve a particular level? If so, do you do this by individual digital object, by collection or for the entire repository? How is this information generated/collected and how is it used in program planning? Who contributes to this exercise?

The financial cost of moving up the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation has been a topic that the Levels Steering Group has discussed several times. We were interested to find out if those who use the Levels are using it to predict or plan for financial costs, so this scenario was designed to capture information on this, perhaps to inform future work on the Levels if appropriate.

Of the 13 responses to this question, 5 gave very brief answers stating that they don’t or haven’t yet started using the levels in this way. Of the other longer answers, most of them stated that they don’t use the Levels in this way, but more detail was given in relation to their answer and these are summarized below.

One respondent mentioned that they use the Levels to determine their software/hardware needs – for example, establishing a tape backup in order to comply with Level 3 of Storage. Another mentioned they used the Levels for broader planning, for example to prioritize work. It was noted by another that the Levels may also be helpful in the future for projecting the financial costs of improving and expanding their preservation systems and strategies.

A couple of respondents mentioned how the Levels may inform decisions on staff resource, one stating that the Levels can be useful for advocating for more staff (for example, demonstrating what kinds of activities are expected from a mature digital preservation program) and another stating that they use the NDSA Levels to determine the staff time needed to achieve a particular level. A comment from a different respondent however mentioned that the Levels are too high level for more granular planning around staff time and associated costs.

The link between the NDSA Levels and the DiAGRAM tool from The National Archives UK was made by one respondent. DiAGRAM is a tool to help evidence-based decision making for digital preservation and can help an organization define where effort may be best placed in order to gain maximum value. In order to use DiAGRAM, selected values from a self-assessment using the NDSA Levels should be entered. This was an interesting example of the NDSA Levels being used indirectly to aid decision making on where to best allocate financial resource.

 

Do you take environmental impact into account when making decisions about how to manage and preserve digital content? Does this impact your use of the NDSA Levels, perhaps influencing the level that you aim for?

Of the 12 answers to this question, six simply answered no (or in the case of one, “Not yet”). Of the more detailed answers provided there is a real sense that this is a developing area with some organizations just beginning to think on this topic and others having started to take steps to try and limit their impact on the environment.

One organization stated that they are increasing the time between fixity checks to save on power and another agreed that this question mainly comes to the fore when thinking about bitstream preservation (though they did not yet have concrete plans on how to address this or how this might impact their use of the Levels). One mentioned that they have started taking environmental impact into account in their planning but this is not captured in their work with the Levels, but another suggested that environmental impacts are likely to affect their progress up the NDSA Levels, suggesting that they might make a strategic decision to stay at a lower level of the model. In a similar vein, there was an acknowledgement from one respondent that a response to environmental concerns may impact on their work with the NDSA Levels in the future and they may need to annotate their self-assessment with rationale around decisions to aim for a lower level (particularly around environmentally responsible storage options).

It was interesting to see the answers to this question and the Levels Steering Group is keen to explore this topic further. We’d love to discuss this with you at our next ‘Open Session’ (on 16th August at  11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Eastern) which will be on the theme of the Levels of Preservation and Environmental Sustainability. We are keen to hear how the community would like us to engage with this topic and if there is any work required to update the Levels with this in mind.

We also have more to share from our Levels Scenarios Survey so watch this space for further blogs! 

Also a big thank you to those community members who engaged with this survey and shared their practices on using the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation.

Catching up with past NDSA Excellence Awards Winners: Asociación Iberoamericana de Preservación Digital (APREDIG)

The Asociación Iberoamericana de Preservación Digital (APREDIG) won the 2019 Organization Innovation Award. APREDIG is a nonprofit Ibero-American association founded at the end of 2017 in Barcelona, Spain, with the intention of promoting the importance of digital preservation in Spainish-speaking countries. Its activity has culminated in projects and activities to disseminate a Spanish translation of the original NDSA Levels of Preservation, opening-up significant new opportunities for expanding digital stewardship best practices, and subsequent outcomes, by practitioners in Spain and Latin America. Led by Dr. Miquel Termens and Dr. David Leija Román (Universitat de Barcelona), this group of volunteers, researchers, and disseminators of best practices for digital preservation have created an online self-assessment tool to help Institutions of Spain and Mexico understand recommendations, key concepts, and simple diagnosis of digital preservation practices using the NDSA Levels as a guideline. 

Headshot of David Leija

 

We recently caught up with Dr. David Leija Román to learn more about the organization’s progress in the last few years. His responses, in English and Spanish, are available below! 

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

We have supported many Institutions in Latin America to correctly apply the NDSA guidelines with workshops and introductory sessions on digital preservation, as well as publishing articles and providing non-profit support to Institutions in the development of their digital preservation policies.

2) What did it mean for you to receive the NDSA award?

It means a lot and has filled us with great emotion to be part of the excellent effort made by the NDSA, since the work of spreading the importance of digital preservation in institutions with few economic and information resources in Latin America is still a subject in training, so this award motivated us to specialize more in what the NDSA does and communicate it in Spanish to our community.

3) What efforts/advances/ideas in recent years have impressed or admired you in the field of data management and/or digital preservation?

One of the most impressive things I have seen in Latin America is the possibility to innovate in the use of NDSA levels in small archival institutions, since with few technological and human resources they have created programs that start with diagnoses of very specific needs, to be communicated to authorities as the importance of digital preservation and from there to create with science about what should be done. This has only been possible thanks to the guidance of the NDSA levels.

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

Mainly, we have become referent disseminators of the NDSA levels guidelines in Spanish, which means a great responsibility to always transmit in the best possible way its objectives and continuous improvements. Today we seek to participate in productive tables and create a network of more integrated in the subject to support each other.

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

In short, it is still the lack of culture about the importance of digital preservation, since the administrations in Latin America are periodic and rotating, so understanding what has been done before and preserving the progress, sometimes in the changes of administration must start again. It is where guidelines such as NDSA and the work of solid declarative policies, help to neutralize the advances so that they are transmitted and continue to move forward with the sustainability of these.

6) Are you working on any new projects related to digital preservation? If so, could you share a bit about the project(s)?

We are currently working hand in hand with the wonderful network of digital preservation services CARINIANA, coordinated by Miguel Márdero. We have several work projects at the digital heritage level in Brazil with the collaboration of different Ibero-American experts. In Mexico we are collaborating with digital preservation repository seedbeds in northern Mexico with the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas and in the design and validation of digital preservation policies. From this aspect we have published articles since 2017 on the use of NDSA levels (https://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com/index.php/EPI/article/view/epi.2017.may.11 ) and on Digital Preservation Policies (https://bid.ub.edu/es/50/leija.htm) to support knowledge transfer in Spanish on the subject.

Click here to read about the other winners of 2019 NDSA Innovation Awards!

Do you know an organization that is working toward clever, inventive, and risk-taking approaches to the challenges and potential of digital preservation? Help us highlight and reward their efforts! Click here to submit a 2023 NDSA Excellence Awards nomination.

Responses in Spanish are below:

1) ¿Qué ha estado haciendo desde que recibió el Premio a la Excelencia de la NDSA?

Hemos apoyado a muchas Instituciones en Latinoamérica para aplicar correctamente las directrices de NDSA levels con talleres y jornadas introductorias a la preservación digital, así como publicar artículos y apoyar sin ánimo de lucro a Instituciones en el desarrollo de sus políticas de preservación digital. 

2) ¿Qué significó para usted recibir el premio NDSA?

Significa muchísimo y nos ha llenado de mucha emoción de ser parte de el excelente esfuerzo que hace la NDSA, ya que el trabajo de divulgar la importancia de la preservación digital en Instituciones con pocos recursos económicos y de información en Latinoamérica sigue siendo una asignatura en formación, por lo que este premio nos motivó a especializarnos más en lo que hace la NDSA y comunicarlo en español a nuestra comunidad.

3) ¿Qué esfuerzos/avances/ideas de los últimos años le han impresionado o admirado en el campo de la administración de datos y/o la preservación digital?

Una de las cosas más impresionantes que he visto en Latinoamérica principalmente es la posibilidad de innovar en el uso de NDSA levels en pequeñas Instituciones de archivos, ya que con pocos recursos tecnológicos y humanos se han creado programas que inician con diagnósticos de necesidades muy específicas, para ser comunicadas a autoridades a modo de importancia de la preservación digital y de ahí crear conciencia sobre lo que se debe hacer. Esto solo se ha podido lograr gracias a la guía de los NDSA levels. 

4) ¿Cómo ha evolucionado tu trabajo desde que ganaste el Premio a la Excelencia?

Principalmente nos hemos convertido en divulgadores referentes de las directrices NDSA levels en habla hispana (español), esto significa una gran responsabilidad de siempre transmitir de la mejor forma posible sus objetivos y mejoras continuas. Hoy en día buscamos participar en mesas productivas y crear red de más integrantes en el tema para apoyarnos mutuamente.

5) ¿Cuáles ve actualmente como algunos de los mayores desafíos u oportunidades en la preservación digital?

En definitiva sigue siendo la falta de cultura sobre la importancia de la preservación digital, ya que las administraciones en America latina son periódicas y rotativas, por lo que el entender que se ha hecho antes y conservar los avances, a veces en los cambios de administración se debe iniciar de nuevo. Es donde las directrices como NDSA y el trabajo de políticas sólidas declarativas, ayudan a neutralizar los avances para que estos sean transmitidos y seguir avanzando con la sostenibilidad de estos. 

6) ¿Estás trabajando en algún nuevo proyecto relacionado con la preservación digital? Si es así, ¿podría compartir un poco sobre el (los) proyecto (s)? 

Actualmente trabajamos de la mano con la estupenda red de servicios de preservación digital CARINIANA, que coordina Miguel Márdero. Tenemos varios proyectos de trabajo a nivel de patrimonio digital en Brasil con la colaboración de diferentes expertos iberoamericanos. En México estamos colaborando con semilleros de repositorios de preservación digital en el norte de México con la Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas y en el diseño y validación de políticas de preservación digital. Desde está vertiente hemos publicado artículos desde el 2017 sobre el uso de NDSA levels (https://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com/index.php/EPI/article/view/epi.2017.may.11 ) y sobre Políticas de Preservación digital (https://bid.ub.edu/es/50/leija.htm) para apoyar en transferencia de conocimiento en español sobre el tema.

¡Haga clic aquí para leer sobre otros ganadores de los Premios a la Innovación NDSA 2019!

¿Conoce alguna organización que esté trabajando para lograr enfoques inteligentes, inventivos y arriesgados para los desafíos y el potencial de la preservación digital? ¡Ayúdanos a destacar y recompensar sus esfuerzos! Haga clic aquí para enviar una nominación a los Premios a la Excelencia NDSA 2023.

 

Programs are Live for CLIR’s 2023 Events: DLF Forum, Learn@DLF, and DigiPres

The Council on Library and Information Resources is delighted to announce the release of the full conference programs for our in-person events happening in St. Louis, Missouri, this November: the Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Forum and Learn@DLF, and NDSA’s Digital Preservation 2023: Communities of Time and Place. This year’s programs are full of exciting content, and you won’t want to miss them.

Explore the Programs

Join us for our events on the following dates:


While each of our events is unique, all three contain exciting content presented in a variety of formats, ranging from focused lightning talks to longer panels, short presentations to half-day workshops. With 4-5 simultaneous tracks, there’s always something interesting happening at CLIR’s fall events. We are grateful to our volunteer Reviewers and Program Committees, without whom these fabulous programs would not have come together. 

Secure the early bird rate, register for our events, book your hotel, browse our new community-written St. Louis local guide, and start planning for yet another memorable week with CLIR. 

DLF member organizations receive one complimentary DLF Forum registration as part of their member benefits. Not sure who received your code? We’d be happy to help. Contact us at forum@diglib.org. 

If you have any questions, please write to us at forum@diglib.org. We’re looking forward to seeing you in St. Louis this fall.

-Team DLF

Council on Library and Information Resources: https://www.clir.org/
Digital Library Federation: https://www.diglib.org/
NDSA: https://ndsa.org/

P.S. Want to stay updated on all things #DLFforum? Subscribe to our Forum newsletter and follow us at @CLIRDLF on Twitter.

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.

Request for Participation in the next Storage Survey Working Group

The latest iteration of the NDSA Storage Survey Working Group is starting up soon. This longitudinal survey has been run three times, with the last survey published in 2019. If you are interested in participating in this group please read the scope of work and complete this form by July 21, 2023.

It is expected that work for the survey will start in August 2023 and end about 6-10 months later, with the group meeting about twice monthly. Work would also be done between meetings to review the survey questions and results, and to write a final report. We especially welcome participation from international NDSA members and members who have not previously participated in NDSA groups.

By volunteering, Working Group members agree to follow the NDSA Code of Conduct. 

Survey Scope of Work:

  • Review past surveys, possible redesign for this iteration
  • Develop 2023 survey
  • Survey deployment
  • Data analysis and research
  • Writing final report

If you have questions, please contact:

Sibyl Schaefer, sschaefer@ucsd.edu 

Please complete this form by July 21, 2023 to indicate your interest in participating.

 

Registration is Now Open for CLIR’s 2023 Events, Learn@DLF Program Available, Keynotes Announced

The Council on Library and Information Resources is delighted to announce that we have opened registration for our in-person conferences happening in St. Louis, Missouri, this November: the Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Forum, Learn@DLF, and NDSA’s Digital Preservation 2023.

Our events will take place on the following dates:

The program for Learn@DLF, which features 10 exciting workshops, is also now available.

We’re also very excited to announce the featured speakers for all of our events:

  • Kishonna Gray will present “Archiving Cultures: Gaming as Black Digital Storytelling” at the DLF Forum
  • Jamie A. Lee will present “Kairotic and Kin-centric Archives: Addressing Abundances and Abandonments” at DigiPres


Secure the early bird rate, register for Learn@DLF workshops, book your hotel, and start planning for yet another memorable week with CLIR. 

DLF member organizations receive one complimentary DLF Forum registration as part of their member benefits. Not sure who received your code? Email us at forum@diglib.org. 

Learn more about our events and keynotes on the DLF Forum Blog.

Register Today

If you have any questions, please write to us at forum@diglib.org. We’re looking forward to seeing you in St. Louis this fall.

-Team DLF

P.S. Want to stay updated on all things #DLFforum? Subscribe to our Forum newsletter and follow us at @CLIRDLF on Twitter.

 

Learn@DLF: Nov. 12, 2023; 2023 DLF Forum: Nov. 13-15, 2023; NDSA Digital Preservation: Nov. 15-16, 2023. St Louis!

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.

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