Strategies for Establishing Partnerships for Digital Preservation

Leslie JohnstonActing Director, National Digital Information Infrastructure

and Preservation Program, The Library of Congress

ESOPI Symposium 2013

The mission of NDIIPP is to ensure access over time to a rich body of digital content through the establishment of a national network of partners committed to selecting, collecting and preserving at-risk digital information

What is NDIIPP?

A network of people & organizationsAn architecture for preservation

Identify and preserve at-risk digital content

Develop a national digital collection and preservation strategy

Support development of improved tools, models, and methods for digital preservation

Work with industry, concerned government agencies, libraries, research institutions and not-for-profit entities

Phases of NDIIPP Network Formation

Seed

Strengthen and Expand

Sustain

Formalize

That model applies to the development and sustainability of all partnerships and collaborations.

Catalyze relationships Identify affinities

ContentTechnical ArchitectureRightsSustainability

Identify and Seed the Partnership(s)

Experienced Service Providers Documented Capacity Builders Committed Content Custodians Communities of Practice and

Exchange

Look For…

Managing Infrastructure

Federating Storage Managing Large Data

Sets Media and Format

Migration Identifying Risk in

Time

Identify Expertise to Share

Models of workflow Models for access Metadata

Implementation Managing IP Rights

Custodian

Data Manager

User Creator

Cataloger Distributor

Owner

Selector

ROLES

Focus on the need to facilitate integration

EX: Library of Congress roles:

Trusted intermediary

The channel to Congress

Promote the vision and priorities

Your organization has to know its role and responsibilities

The Goal of any Partnership Must be to Learn by Doing

The NDIIPP network has been emergent, not

designed Ownership of digital preservation challenge

must be distributed The Library is regarded as a trusted broker

and convener Benefits of shared expertise and resources

can be gained through collaboration Organizational models depend upon strength

of leadership and commitment Trust is built by working toward a common goal

Example: The National Digital Stewardship Alliance

A collaborative effort among government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and business entities

MissionTo serve as stewards of America’s

national digital collection by collecting, safeguarding, preserving, and ensuring long-term access to historically, culturally, or scientifically significant digital content.

Two Types of Relationships: Members & AssociatesMembers

Organizations that commit to making a sustained contribution to national digital stewardship in one or more roles

Associates Stakeholders who share an interest in

digital preservation, support the Alliance’s mission and are willing to provide expertise

A Diversity of Organizations

• Universities• State governments• State libraries, archives and historical

societies• Other federal agencies• Public broadcasting• Commercial content distributors and

owners• New business services• Technology companies• National libraries in US and abroad

Roles & ResponsibilitiesContent Contribute significant

materials to the national digital collection to be preserved and made available to current and future generations

Standards & Practices Develop, follow and promote

effective methods for selecting, organizing, preserving, and serving digital content

Roles & Responsibilities

Infrastructure Develop and maintain tools

and services for the long term preservation of digital content

Roles & Responsibilities

InnovationEncourage and conduct

research in digital preservation science and technologies

Roles & Responsibilities

Outreach and EducationBuild relationships with

stakeholder communities and prepare and share digital preservation training resources and guides

Roles & Responsibilities

Advocacy Promote awareness and

policy for digital preservation

Roles & Responsibilities

What is Success?

The Success of a partnership will be based on a shared focus on a content domain e.g. geospatial, not on all domains.

General digital preservation issues are better addressed within a content domain rather than as the focus in and of itself.

What is Success?

Success must be measured in concrete goals and deliverables that are widely and openly distributed.

Success is also measured in enthusiasm, participation, and in adoption by the community.

Examples of Goals and Success from the NDSA

Identify content already preserved, investigate guidelines for the selection of significant content, enable discovery of at-risk digital content or collections, and match orphan content with NDSA partners who will acquire the content, preserve it, and provide access to it.

A working registry of content already preserved by NDSA members.

A clearinghouse that will enable a variety of stakeholders (content producers, archives and libraries and other potential preservationists) to identify and adopt at-risk collections

Content

InfrastructureBuild a community for sharing information and best practices about the development and maintenance of tools and systems for the curation, preservation, storage, hosting, migration, or similar activities for the long term preservation of digital content.

A resource for sharing and documenting emerging practices for use and development and sharing of open source tools and

other software that enable digital preservation as well as computer forensic tools that enable digital preservation; and

potential preservation use of large-scale storage and cloud infrastructures.

Examples of Goals and Success from the NDSA

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 find solutions where none exist.

Digital Preservation Innovation Awards

Examples of Goals and Success from the NDSA

Outreach

Build 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.

Broaden the spread of the message through social media A public awareness campaign New partners and new communities

Examples of Goals and Success from the NDSA

Standards and Practices

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

A map of the digital preservation standards landscape.

Examples of Goals and Success from the NDSA

How does this fit with Public/Private Partnerships?

Those have the same parameters.

Questions and Discussion

Leslie Johnston

lesliej@loc.gov