This symposium is intended to be based on community conversations and participation from attendees – there will be several ways to engage during the day and we are sincerely looking forward to hearing from all of you.
To help you feel prepared for an engaging day, information about participating in the symposium will be posted here , including references and resources and details about the working groups and lightning talks.
Lightning Talks
We’d love to hear from you! Can you talk for 5 minutes or less about a workaround, weird little fix, workflow adjustment, physical process change, line of script, training change, or staffing shakeup that you’ve done in your digital preservation program? Share! It doesn’t have to be a big project (it probably shouldn’t be a big project!) – nothing is too small, or too common sense. ONE SLIDE MAXIMUM 🙂
Working Groups
During the Working Group sessions, attendees will work in small groups with a facilitator to explore current practices at their institutions as well as across the field of digital preservation, reflect on the future of practice in their own institutions and across the field, and recommend some paths for moving forward. These conversations will be grounded in research presented during the Research Forum, as well as relevant research and documentation presented by facilitators.
Working group descriptions are below this short survey we would like you to fill out.
Working Group Topics:
- Technical debt, legacy projects, early digital collections:
- First deployed in the field of software development in the early 1990s, the notion of “technical debt” now gives organizations engaged in digital projects a way to think about the trade-offs we make in managing these projects toward some desired end. After a very brief introduction to the concept of technical debt and how it may operate in the digital curation lifecycle, this group will explore when and how to incur debt to “finance” gains in digital preservation work, and how they might make plans to pay it off. We will also discuss any legacy, ongoing, or planned projects where group members might further benefit from this framing.
- Storage, technical infrastructure:
- This working group will discuss the trends, challenges, and successful practices in technological infrastructure required for effective digital preservation. A major source of discussion will be the community created Digital Preservation Storage Criteria (https://osf.io/sjc6u/). Bring your ideas for technological infrastructure topics affecting the digital preservation field to the conversation. Storage, networks, computing equipment, and information security technology are all possible areas of exploration.
- Roles, training, organizational structure
- The goal of this session is to identify ways that the field of digital preservation can continue supporting individual institutions in moving past barriers associated with organizational structure, roles, and training that hinder digital preservation efforts. To accomplish this goal, we will talk about present and future successes and challenges in roles, responsibilities, and training in your organization and in the broader field of digital preservation. We’ll compare and contrast across organizations, and imagine what the future might look like.
- The goal of this session is to identify ways that the field of digital preservation can continue supporting individual institutions in moving past barriers associated with organizational structure, roles, and training that hinder digital preservation efforts. To accomplish this goal, we will talk about present and future successes and challenges in roles, responsibilities, and training in your organization and in the broader field of digital preservation. We’ll compare and contrast across organizations, and imagine what the future might look like.
- Benchmarking, assessment
- Building a digital preservation program includes many challenges, and requires taking a holistic view of all activities to create a sustainable program. This working group will discuss the ways that benchmarking assessment is currently used in the community challenges. We will take a look at a number of existing benchmarks and assessments for digital preservation for discussion, such as ISO 16363 (TRAC), the NDSA Levels of Preservation, and the DAT Framework.
- Building a digital preservation program includes many challenges, and requires taking a holistic view of all activities to create a sustainable program. This working group will discuss the ways that benchmarking assessment is currently used in the community challenges. We will take a look at a number of existing benchmarks and assessments for digital preservation for discussion, such as ISO 16363 (TRAC), the NDSA Levels of Preservation, and the DAT Framework.
- Accessibility, user-centered practice
- We preserve information so that it can be accessed in the future. The OAIS reference model ends with the Consumer accessing the Dissemination Information Package: simple, right? As we know, access is not so straightforward. This working group will discuss topics related to users of digital collections. Areas of discussion could include: the range of expectations that users have for the accessibility and usability of information, the ways in which institutions assess whether and how they are or are not meeting these expectations, and user and stakeholder involvement in policy development.
- National strategy, institutional strategic planning
- The NDSA National Agenda for Digital Stewardship, currently undergoing its 3rd revision, is an attempt to define the major strategic challenges for the digital stewardship community. However, we all face major strategic challenges implementing digital stewardship in our own organizations. How does each effort inform the other? This working group will attempt to find connections between national and hyper-local strategic planning efforts. Resources: