The National Digital Stewardship Alliance: Community, Content, Commitment

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance: Community, Content,

Commitment

• A collaborative effort among government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and business entities to promote the preservation of a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of citizens now and in the future.

• Community-driven, action-oriented

• An initiative of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) at the Library of Congress

Membership• 124 member organizations have joined the NDSA since it was founded in July 2010

• Diverse public and private sector membership

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners

• Open to any organization committed to the preservation of digital cultural heritage

Highlights

Taking care of over 150 billion digital cultural heritage items

• Web sites, texts, images, geospatial data, datasets, TV broadcasts, motion pictures, sound recordings, government records, business records

• The Library of Congress and Members of the NDSA are committed to serving as digital stewards of America's national digital collection and employing standards, systems, and cooperative relationships that advance digital stewardship.

• Members commit to pursuing and participating in collaborative stewardship endeavors for at-risk digital content.

• Promote the issue of Digital Preservation to stakeholders

Objectives

Working Groups

Members commit to participating in one of the five working groups of the Alliance• Content• Infrastructure• Innovation• Outreach • Standards and Practices

ContentIdentify content already preserved, investigate guidelines for selection of significant content, and match orphan content with NDSA partners who will acquire the content, preserve it, and provide access to it• Registry of content• Clearinghouse to ID at-risk content, match

orphan collections• Guidance on appraisal for local government

information• Surveys of DP activity, web archiving in

particular

Infrastructure

Identify and share emerging practices around the development and maintenance of tools and systems for the curation, preservation, storage, hosting, migration, and similar activities supporting the long term preservation of digital content

• Computer forensics for appraisal, processing• Specialized communities, GIS, social science

data

Highlights

Preservation Storage System Survey conducted 2011

• 76% of membership keep copies in multiple geographic locations

• Results published on The Signal

InnovationEncourage and share innovative methods of digital preservation practices and technologies in order to distribute, document, and share emerging concepts, while conducting and guiding research and development with engaged partners to explore new solutions and opportunities

• Awards program• Case studies of DP challenges• Identify gaps, needs

Highlights

NDSA Innovation Awards • Recognizing innovation in the field of digital

stewardship• Four categories: Individual, Project, Organization,

Future steward• Nominations by May 18, 2012 at

www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/awards.html

OutreachBuild relationships with stakeholder communities. Identify and assess tools the NDSA community needs for communication, Identify, prepare and promote key digital preservation information resources. Recognize and act on opportunities for outreach within the NDSA and to the larger community

• Establishing a clearinghouse of digital preservation information

• Utilizing social media tools to spread the DP message

• Design public awareness campaigns

Highlights

“Digital Preservation in a Box”

• A gentle introduction for a general audience of professionals who work with digital information but have no digital preservation experience

http://ndsa/ezphotoscanning.net/omeka

Standards and PracticesFacilitate a community-wide understanding of the role of standards in digital preservation and how to use them effectively to ensure durable collections

• Conducting broad surveys of institutions responsible for digital preservation to:• Reveal current and ideal digital preservation

staffing levels and functions• Identify the standards and best practices

that are actually in use at these institutions

Highlights

WikiProject Digital Preservation• Improving Wikipedia’s coverage

of digital preservation and the organization of information and articles on the topic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Digital_Preservation

More information about the Alliance is atwww.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/

Read about NDSA work on The Signalblogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/

www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa