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Dear NDSA Community,
Happy Summer!
At midyear, we are writing to provide an update on events and activities, and to call for your participation.
Please join us in welcoming the Boston College Libraries, Code Ocean, Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL), Drexel University Libraries, Grand Valley State University Libraries, Komodo Cloud, University of Arizona Libraries, Code Ocean, Washington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, which joined as members NDSA in 2017.
They join the following other new members who have become part of NDSA's community in the course of the last year or so: James Madison University, the Modern Language Association, Bryn Mawr College, the Digital Preservation Network (DPN), Digital Bedrock, the Gates Library, Purchase College Library, the Vintage Computer Federation, OhioLINK, the University of Houston Libraries, and Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust).
You can view the full member list (currently over 200) on the NDSA web site: view the full member list.
Registration is now open for our annual conference, Digital Preservation 2017: “Preservation is Political,” in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 25-26, 2017.
Last year our Digital Preservation 2016 conference (the first hosted by DLF) boasted high attendance, and dozens of sessions, panels, and working group meetings. Submission received for 2017 are even higher -- and this year’s program promises to be very rich.
The National Agenda working group seeks members who will contribute to the organization, editing, and contents of the 2017 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship.
Please contact the Chair, Micah Altman ([log in to unmask]) by August 15, 2017.
The NDSA National Agenda for Digital Stewardship integrates the perspective of dozens of experts and hundreds of institutions to provide funders and executive decision‐makers insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity, and key areas for funding, research and development to ensure that today’s valuable digital content remains accessible and comprehensible in the future, supporting a thriving economy, a robust democracy, and a rich cultural heritage.
The previous edition of the National Agenda was published in 2015, and received considerable attention from both practitioner communities and research funders. The 2017 edition will characterize the most technical, research, and organizational challenges that offer the greatest potential to advance or delay digital preservation in the next 3-5 years, and identify key approaches, initiatives, and organizations engaged in these challenge areas.
Over the course of the year, this working group will meet regularly to conduct a survey of NDSA members on digital preservation challenges; review emerging publications and initiatives; edit the agenda document; and manage the external review and response process.
In support of the Digital Preservation conference, the NDSA coordinating committee and working group chairs piloted a draft set of community communication guidelines and code of conduct. This includes a specific code of conduct for meetings, and general norms for respectful communication and collaboration -- whether the mode is e-mail, phone, twitter, telegraph or IRL.
The published draft is here:
Please make comment or suggest revisions using this collaborative document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1scPMihnjzYdYFf2kXvSgOPto8Ej4XFMMhejMJSEYFLo/edit
In the fall the coordinating committee will work to incorporate comments and suggestions, and then circulate a revised draft to interest groups for final review, and to NSDA-ALL for approval.
Web Archiving in the United States
Last year, the NDSA Web Archiving working group launched the third annual web archiving survey. The results are now in. This report describes the current state of the field, tracks the evolution of the field over the last few years, and points to future opportunities and developments. One substantial finding of the report is that:
“Many areas of web archiving exist that elicit a broad desire for collaboration, though many institutions feel they have neither the time nor resources to participate in collaborative activities. The community and the stakeholders that value the content the community stewards needs to invest research and development effort to create sustainable frameworks that facilitate meaningful, practical and effective collaboration.”
The full report is openly available.
Trends in Digital Preservation Capacity and Practice
This year, the Fixity Working Group will be launching the third NDSA-wide survey on storage and fixity practices. To complement this, a new report, based on the previous two surveys (spanning four years) is being published on the NDSA website, and through D-Lib. One substantial finding is that:
“There is considerable room for improvement in the tactics organizations are using to ensure and be able to attest to the fixity of their content. This improvement is attainable as there are a range of tools that can support this work. It is critical that organizations stewarding information for the long haul work toward performing at least basic levels of fixity checking.”
The complete article is openly available.
We encourage all NDSA community members to read the new Web Archiving survey, comment on the draft community guidelines, and to continue to engage with their interest groups to identify and launch working group projects.
Very Best,
Micah Altman
On behalf of the NDSA Coordinating Committee
