Tag: working group

Interested in exploring the intersection between climate change and digital preservation? Join the new Climate Watch Working Group 

Global warming and climate change is currently wreaking havoc on the world. As digital preservation professionals, it is our responsibility to mitigate threats that impede our ability to steward digital materials through time. Climate change not only threatens our data through more frequent and more severe weather disasters, but also through reductions in food supply, mass migrations, economic contraction, and political upheaval. In order to start addressing these very real threats, the Climate Watch Working Group has been charged with:

  1. Producing regular annotated bibliographies on recent literature, news, and reports related to climate change and its impact on digital preservation
  2. Creating and adding to an ongoing list of potential risks climate change poses to digital preservation work
  3. Creating and adding to lists of core climate change information resources to get a solid grounding in the issue, help with future projections, and lobby for preservation resources.

The Climate Watch Working Group is the first of at least two NDSA working groups that will be formed to help the profession address how we can adapt our practices and policies to the uncertain future climate change poses. Both groups are expected to work closely together and members who sign up for the Climate Watch Working Group will be welcome to move to the Climate Preparation group when it is established. 

The Climate Watch Working Group will meet twice a month with regular assignments between meetings. The expected time commitment is approximately 30 minutes to one hour a week in addition to the bimonthly meeting time.      

Please reach out to Sibyl Schaefer (sschaefer(at)ucsd(dot)edu) by Dec. 11, 2023 if you are interested in contributing.

Peer Recognition and Motivation: Krista Oldham on the NDSA Excellence Awards

Krista Oldham headshot

Krista Oldham is the University Archivist at Texas A&M University, College Station, where her responsibilities include overseeing the acquisition, description, and preservation of University records, as well as supporting and promoting their use. Additionally, Krista provides oversight for the Texas A&M records management program. Prior to starting her position at Texas A&M, Krista worked at Clemson University as the University Archivist, Haverford College as the College Archivist/Records Manager for Quaker and Special Collections and at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Special Collections as the Senior Archivist and the Senior Archives Manager. In addition to her archival work, Krista served as Co-Director of the Arkansas Delta Oral History Project and  co-author of The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project: Culture, Place, and Authenticity, published in 2016.

Krista also co-chaired the Excellence Awards Working Group from 2021 to 2023. So, we reached out to her to ask for her perspective on these awards.

In what way are you connected to the National Digital Stewardship Alliance?

Currently, I am serving on the NDSA’s Long-term Conference Planning Working Group and I just confirmed my commitment to serving as a member of the NDSA Storage Survey Working Group. 

From your perspective, what do the NDSA Excellence Awards represent?

I think that they represent peer recognition of excellence in the field of digital preservation. I think the award encourages and motivates individuals to strive to advance digital preservation through meaningful contributions at an individual level and an institutional/programmatic level.

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

For me, I have really enjoyed the community-driven digital preservation projects that have emerged in the last few years. I am extremely impressed when folk get together, collaborate, and pool resources to help others achieve their goals.

How do you feel the Excellence Awards encourage practitioners of digital stewardship/preservation?

I hope it encourages ideas and shows folks that their hard work matters and that the future success of digital preservation is a collaborative venture.

What do you currently see as some of the biggest challenges in digital preservation?

Not having the appropriate amount of resources and that can be monetary or staffing. The NDSA Staffing Survey, which I was a member of the WG, clearly indicated that staffing-levels are not where they need to be. I also think a challenge is working toward being environmentally sustainable with our digital preservation practices.

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.

 

Call for New Members and Co-Chairs, NDSA Excellence Awards Working Group

The NDSA Excellence Awards were established in 2012 to highlight and commend all forms of creative and meaningful contributions by individual professionals, future stewards, educators, organizations, projects, and sustainability activities to the field of digital preservation. This year’s awards will be presented in person at the Digital Preservation 2023 conference, which will be held in St. Louis, Missouri on November 15-16, 2023.

The Excellence Awards depend upon the vital volunteer participation of the community. We are looking for new members for the Excellence Awards Working Group (EAWG) at both the co-chair and at-large level. Working group members participate to publicize the nomination process, review nominations, select the winners, and work closely with the awardees and NDSA programming to organize the Awards Ceremony. This group typically meets once a month and works as needed between regularly scheduled calls to support the awards process. Most work outside of meetings occurs when reviewing applications (2-4 hours), and then in October leading up to the Awards Ceremony (1-2 hours/week). 

While the NDSA Awards were originally organized on an annual cycle, they are now presented on a biennial basis as the result of a cooperative agreement with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), which operates their own biennial awards program. The NDSA Awards are presented in the odd-numbered years (including this 2023 year!), while the DPC Awards take place in even-numbered years. NDSA and DPC also provide participation on each other’s Awards panels.

This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about the activities and impact of a wide range of exceptional people and projects. We welcome participation from students and early career professionals, as well as from those who have been in the digital preservation field for a while!

If you would like to help on this working group, please fill out this form by Friday, March 3. Working group members must be affiliated with an NDSA member institution and agree to follow the NDSA Code of Conduct.

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!

Call for Participation: NDSA Membership Working Group

Looking to get involved with NDSA in the new year? We’re looking for members who want to be a part of the conversations that shape our membership models going forward.

We will discuss:

  • The feasibility of membership fees, such as paid tiers.
  • Affiliate memberships for individuals vs. institutional memberships.
  • Criteria for evaluating new members.
  • Increasing membership.
  • Early career and student outreach.
  • New member onboarding.

View more about the Membership Working Group here. If you are interested in discussing these issues, please contact Rachel Appel (rappel@upenn.edu) or Stacey Erdman (staceyerdman@arizona.edu). We especially welcome new members. We ask that volunteers remain on this working group for a two-year term. Please let us know by January 17th.

Best,
~Rachel Appel, University of Pennsylvania
~ Stacey Erdman, University of Arizona

Request for Participation in the Web Archiving Survey Working Group

Re-launched in 2021, the Web Archiving Survey Working Group plans to conduct a survey of organizations in the United States and beyond that are actively involved in, or interested in starting, programs to archive content from the Web. This survey, to be published in 2022, will build on previous iterations of the ‘Web Archiving in the United States’ surveys, published in 2017, 2016, 2013, and 2011. 

Before work begins in earnest, the Web Archiving Survey Working Group co-chairs, Zakiya Collier and Samantha Abrams, are seeking 3-4 additional Working Group volunteers to review previous surveys and design a new survey, publish the survey and collect responses, review the responses and write the report, and present results and work at upcoming conferences. Volunteers should represent a range of institutions, types, and locations, and will explicitly include one student (or a recent graduate) working towards their Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies in order to engage them with the NDSA and its members.

It’s estimated that joining the Web Archiving Survey Working Group will be a 9 month commitment (4-5 hours of work per month), with work beginning in December 2021.

Those interested in serving should complete this form by Friday, November 12: https://forms.gle/BxDBcbatMjRC3eyG6. Co-chairs will review the responses and reach out with next steps soon thereafter.

Questions? Please email Samantha Abrams and Zakiya Collier at ndsa-web-archiving@googlegroups.com.

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

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