survey – NDSA Blog

Member Fee Survey: Feedback Requested

NDSA has been an active membership organization since its founding in 2010. It advocates for the digital stewardship needs of its member organizations, convenes a community of practice, and provides professional development opportunities for its members. Today, NDSA is completely run by volunteers from its member organizations, with administrative assistance subsidized by CLIR.

NDSA membership has always been free for any organization committed to long-term digital stewardship. While NDSA has thrived thanks to an active network of volunteers, this model has also presented many challenges to NDSA’s sustainability and independence as the organization has grown and matured. While NDSA was fortunate to have been funded through the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program in our early years, and has received financial support from CLIR since 2016, we now find ourselves unable to fulfill our mission and goals without a sustainable funding model.

NDSA funding would enable us to hire a community manager, who would onboard and support NDSA members, coordinate communications and outreach, and assist with NDSA in-person and virtual events. These are all unmet needs that have been identified as high priority through member surveys, interviews, and discussions within NDSA Leadership.

Over the past few years, NDSA engaged in many activities to uncover these unmet needs. The Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment began in 2021. The group conducted a survey of NDSA’s member base to measure the current value of benefit offerings and understand how to attract and recruit broader partnerships. Survey results led to the creation of the Membership Working Group, charged with discussing the findings on membership types and fees, criteria for evaluating new members, improving the new member onboarding, and more. In 2023, the Membership Working Group held group listening forums and individual interviews to gain more information on member preferences and opportunities for NDSA to engage with and grow our membership. The group recently completed its recommendations on improvements and expansion of NDSA’s member engagement, and submitted a report for review by the NDSA Leadership.

Concurrently in 2022, NDSA Leadership began efforts to explore the optimal organizational alignment to meet member needs and help NDSA fulfill its mission and to serve as a national leader in the field of digital preservation. Through this evaluation, NDSA refreshed its Mission, Vision, and Values and developed a summary of its current host relationship with CLIR, its operational support requirements, and its financial impact.

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. The group recommended that NDSA lengthen the interval between its national in-person conferences, incorporate more virtual options, and create a clear mission statement for those in-person gatherings. They also recommended that NDSA explore the implementation of smaller “Designated Community” events that would be accessible to more of its members. Through these recommendations, NDSA will develop a more holistic strategy for its programming and events. A new working group focused on implementing these improvements to NDSA events began its work in May 2024.

When thinking about how to financially support these growing needs, NDSA Leadership has discussed a sliding scale membership fee model, organizational vs. individual memberships, vendor sponsorships, and revenue from events such as the DigiPres conference. Your feedback is critical to help us determine a membership fee schedule that would be both sustainable and affordable. If a fee-for-membership model is not feasible for a majority of member organizations, NDSA will evaluate its other funding options. However, without sustainable funding, meeting the most basic needs of NDSA’s members will be at risk and NDSA’s strategic goals will not be met.

In order to evaluate these funding options, we have created a brief survey which should take about 10 minutes to complete. The survey will be sent out via email to NDSA’s member representatives – please keep an eye on your inbox! In exchange for completing the survey, you may choose to be entered into a raffle for one free registration to the next DigiPres conference. (Your contact information will only be used for the raffle and will not be included in the dataset for analysis.) We request that you complete the survey by September 10, 2024.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Bethany Scott, NDSA Coordinating Committee Chair, at ndsa[dot]digipres [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you for your feedback and support!

It’s here, the 2023 NDSA Preservation Storage Infrastructure Survey!

Do you manage and preserve content? If so, we’d like to know about your preservation storage infrastructure! The NDSA Preservation Storage Infrastructure Working Group is back again, with our latest iteration of the NSDA Preservation Storage Infrastructure survey. Please contribute to our longitudinal research designed to gain insight into how organizations worldwide use preservation storage to ensure long-term access to their digital content and to learn how real-world capacity and best practices differ.

The survey will remain open until November 22, 2023 and should take approximately 30 minutes to complete. We will make our best effort to protect your individual responses so that no one will be able to connect your responses with you or your organization. Any personal information that could identify you or your organization will be removed or changed before survey results are made public. We will combine your responses along with the responses of others and make the aggregated results public in mid-2024. To assist with completing the survey all of the survey questions can be viewed in advance.

The results of our previous studies are provided here for your perusal: 2011, 2013, 2019.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to the survey Co-chairs, Amy Allen (ala005 [at] uark [dot] edu) and Sibyl Schaefer (sschaefer [at] ucsd [dot] edu) with any questions you have about the survey.

Thank you for your participation, and thank you for helping NDSA and our community define and advance digital preservation!

~ The NDSA Storage Infrastructure Survey Working Group

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.

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.

How do you use the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation?

The NDSA Levels of Preservation Steering group would like to find out more about particular scenarios in which the Levels are being used. This information will help others who are using the Levels and may also inform future work. Rather than looking for full and detailed case studies, we hope to gather real life activities from a range of different organizations using the Levels answering specific questions and scenarios of interest to the community.

We are interested in the following questions:

How you routinely use the NDSA Levels? – Is it on a regular schedule? Who does it? Who is the information communicated to? What documentation is maintained?
At what level of granularly you use the NDSA Levels? – Do you do just one assessment for all your holdings, or do you do it multiple times for different departments of types of content?
How does the NDSA Levels fit in with the bigger picture of certification and maturity modeling for your organization? – Do you use the Levels alongside other certification standards, maturity models or self-assessment tools? What else do you use and how do these different tools work together to help you move forward?
Are the NDSA Levels used to help project the financial cost of digital preservation? – Do you do this at the level of individual objects, by collection or for the entire repository? How is this information generated? How is it used in program planning? Who contributes to this exercise?
Are environmental considerations are taken into account in your digital preservation work? – How does this impact your use of the Levels?

We welcome contributions no matter how big or small. You are welcome to respond to just one of the scenarios or answer any of the questions that are relevant to you. If multiple scenarios apply to you or your organization, feel free to fill out the form multiple times addressing one question at a time if that is easier.

The information shared with us will be collated and published in a series of themed blog posts. If you wish your contribution to be published anonymously that is fine too!

Please contribute your answers in the Google form by May 1, 2023.

If you would prefer to share your thoughts on any of these questions in a community chat session, we will be hosting our next Levels Office Hour session on this topic on 19th April at 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) so do drop in and share your thoughts (more details and joining instructions can be found here).

We very much look forward to hearing from you!

~ The Levels of Preservation Steering Group

Call for Co-chairs for 2023 Storage Survey

NDSA is seeking two volunteers from NDSA member organizations to serve as co-chairs for the next iteration of the Storage Survey. Volunteers should be knowledgeable about, and interested in, digital preservation storage and comfortable with co-leading a group to produce and administer a survey, analyze data, and write and publish a report. Prior experience chairing an NDSA group is not necessary, and NDSA Leadership will provide guidelines for the co-chairs.

Responsibilities include:

Scheduling and leading meetings
Organizing and completing work
Setting deadlines and tracking progress
Attending monthly NDSA Leadership meetings and communicating with Leadership about Working Group progress

The time commitment will vary based on the number of group members and scope of work.

If you’re interested, please fill out this form by February 15, 2023.