Extending the Reach of Digital Preservation Practice

Editor's Notes

• #3: 2. Place my role in context.
• #4: I would like you to think of this scenario. A historical society in a mid size town has some collections that the board would like to make available more broadly. They have a successful program of events monthly but they would like a higher profile. The board bought them a scanner so they could start exposing some of the diaries, maps and letters more broadly.
• #5: One of the staff offered to start a Facebook page for the organization with links to events and collections
• #6: They had a website and decided to place the digitized images on individual web pages. They had the skills in-house to make web pages and did not have to outsource this activity.
• #7: They made a portal for the images by category.
• #8: They could then put contextual information on the page with the images. It was slow, but they felt they were really getting their content out there.
• #9: So to recap - Good collections – interesting thingsCreating imagesLink to website from FacebookWebpage with digital content linked
• #10: How are the images scanned? Do practices adhere to standards?How are they preserving the digital content?How will this be sustainable?
• #13: If you are at a large institution - the Library of Congress
• #16: As the amount of digital content that was being created grew, the conversations in the digital preservation community intensified. Members of the community joined with key staff at the Library of Congress to begin substantive conversations about what had to happen to stave off big problems down the road.Staff at the Library of Congress initiated a needs assessment that targeted cultural heritage organizations across the US.
• #17: Libraries - 40% 0.4 Archives - 34% 0.34 Museums - 16% 0.16 Historical Societies - 4.5% 0.45 Research Groups - .9% 0.09
• #18: Academic Institutions - 48.3% 0.483 County/Municipal Gov't - 9.6% 0.96 Fed Gov't - 7.7% 0.77 State Gov't - 6.7% 0.67 Other (non-profits)- 25.5% 0.255
• #21: To foster national outreach and education about digital preservation by building a collaborative network of instructors and partners to provide training to individuals and organizations seeking to preserve their digital content.
• #22: There is a real need, as Clifford Lynch noted in Educopia’s publication, Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation or ANADP,to address the growing needs of people who are preserving their own content as an opportunity to raise awareness more broadly through training and as a counterpoint to rapid commercial obsolescence. Unsurprisingly, a lack of staff and/or financial resources can hinder efforts to embed data management and curation skills and activity into education, training, and the workplace. In the US and many other countries in the EU and UK, there have been substantial reductions in funding across the higher education sector as a result of the economic downturn. Developing partnerships or collaborations with private sector companies that are also facing data management challenges is a strategy that we are pursing to help us sustain DPOE
• #23: The Library of Congress co-developed the DPOE curriculum with Dr. Nancy McGovern of MIT. Currently, DPOE activities are guided by a steering committee comprised of leaders from Academia, State Libraries and Archives and the Museum community. The curriculum is comprised of the 6 modules identified on the slideAll modules are offered in a 3 ½ day workshop where the trainees during which time the students are given time to develop a 1 hour presentation on one of the modules and deliver it at the end of the week’s training experience. The trainee leaves the workshop with the materials to offer at least 1 base level workshop to other working professionals in their communities.
• #25: The activities outlined in this slide are the major activities that DPOE pursues. I will review each of them briefly
• #26: Our first step in defining educational needs was through our National Educational Needs Assessment Survey conducted in 2010 We know, first hand, that most organizations are not devoting enough staff resources to data management and curation. In the 2011 national survey DPOE conducted, over 900 respondents, representing organizations of various types and sizes, only 33 percent had full-time or part-time paid staff dedicated to digital preservation duties. 84% percent of respondents said that their organizations consider it very important to preserve digital information for 10 years. Of the materials needing preservation Web sites, architectural and design drawings, research data files, digital image files, PDFs, geographic information files, and audiovisual files- clearly- were all at the top of the list.
• #27: Reviewing existing curricula and developing a standardized curriculum that leverages our current state of knowledge and training opportunities as well as addressing training gaps is key. Our review of existing curricula identified an area where digital preservation education efforts are underserved. This is a big part of the reason why we target working professionals throughout the various regions by offering regional, cost-effective baseline learning experiences. Leaders in digital preservation management from a variety of institutions assisted with the curricula review: The review revealed that target audiences varied from very broad to more focused, and providers used a wide variety of instructional approaches and that gaps in training existed, including in areas of digital preservation policies, checklists, and teaching videos. These gaps must be bridged if tomorrow’s corps of data management and curation experts is to be developed. In addition, the field has a need for professionals with expertise in advanced digital technologies, combined with other LIS expertise. With that, a cadre of experts are addressing the curriculum to import some of these advanced technologies into yet another module to ensure that trainees are versed in the emerging trends in digital technologiesIt is the goal of DPOE to fill these gaps by providing low cost, nationally distributed digital preservation training for working professionals in a variety of formats throughout the country in partnerships with associations, state governments and cultural heritage institutions and private industry.
• #28: We identified core principles that still lead the workshops today Audience:Training is targeted at a specific audienceThe audience cuts across domains – archivists, librarians, digital curation managers in private sector settings, as well as through sectors, locations, and communities The audience is actively involved in training evaluation and impact assessmentContent:Training materials reflect prevailing community standards and practice Training materials are suited to the purpose, level, and topic of the offeringTraining materials include and share as many practical examples and use cases as possibleInstructors:Instructors have a level of knowledge, skills, and experience appropriate to the trainingInstructors actively update and evolve training materialsEvents:Onsite venues are identified to reach a range of relevant participantsare publicized beyond provider perimeters to serve the wider community
• #29: As McGovern and Skinner cited in the ANADP publication, “In the event that there is a clear demand for data curation and management training there is also a risk that the pool of trainers available to deliver courses will not be sufficient to meet this demand.”Digital Preservation Europe (DPE) developed a registry of trainers to help identify individuals capable of contributing to and/or delivering data management, curation, and preservation training. DPOE is doing this now on a regional level. It is clear we need to train up professional trainers, institutional support staff, and practitioners to deliver the courses where appropriate and to make the training readily accessible through regional training networks. The recent DPOE Baseline Workshops’ major goals are to develop a cohort of trainers capable of delivering curation and preservation training. A key component of the workshop was to guide the participants in developing and presenting their own workshops, which they will run in their own regions – the first cohort has trained over 1200 national, regional and local base-line individuals by partnering with each other, associations, etc. DPOE train-the-trainer workshops is the primary mechanism that we use to grow the trainer base.In September 2011, we launched the first Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Program in Washington DC.
• #30: DPOE is based on regional foundations and is supported by a national network of digital preservation trainers. By dividing the country into regions our plan is to ensure that no one area of the country is without digital preservation training opportunities. It is our goal to have trainer representation in every state of the nation. In August of this 2012we trained another 24 digital stewards throughout the mid-west region of the nation. This cohort has begun their training and each will have completed a minimum of one workshop by August 2013.In the summer of 2013 DPOE will offer two additional regional workshops in the States of Indiana and Alaska. This will bring the total core trainees to 96.There is great potential for applying this training approach to data management, curation and preservation in the UK, Europe and indeed worldwide.
• #31: DPOE Trainers gain higher levels of training competency. Topical – the ability to cover a specific topic very well – a majority of students who apply and go through the train the trainer program fall into this categoryUtility – the ability present on multiple diverse topics Anchor – the ability to organize and manage events and serve as a lead presenter and also the ability to revise curriculum – these instructors are the instructors that comprise our core training group when we present regional workshops
• #32: Based on our 2011 national needs assessment survey and our post workshop evaluations, desired delivery options became obviousMajority of the respondents preferred in-person training events since this allows for networking opportunities and the ability for the participants to build community among colleagues in the regional networks. The survey showed a smaller percentage of respondents preferred various types of online training or self paced courses. This has guided us to provide pre-workshop tutorials and to offer post conference support in the form of current research, classroom exercises and templates for various topical presentations.We are currently in negotiations with the nationally recognized American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) which could lead us to developing a new generation of the DPOE curriculum that firmly implants the current learning technologies as they apply to adult learners.With the potential of merging ASTD’s nationally accredited Master Training Certification with the DPOE modules and by adding a yearly continuing education requirement, we could promote a certification program that would ensure digital preservation practitioners remain current and accredited.
• #33: At the moment our outreach materials are online, and focus on helping the program graduates deliver their training events and promote them in their local communities. Once the trainees complete the program, they are provided access to our online training resources.
• #36: DPOE believes that all digital preservation training opportunities should be promoted, hence was the reason we developed the DPOE National Training Calendar.Available at the DPOE website, it was created to centralize all national digital preservation training opportunities. One stop shopping.This makes it much easier for working professionals to find training various formats (online / in-person), in many locations, and at a range of costs. One way to describe them may be to use the DPOE Pyramid nomenclature to identify which level the course are geared towards.
• #37: The bulk of professional development training to date has focused on training those at the middle-management level with awareness-raising skills and the capacity to meet more immediate challenges. With DPOE, we have focused on the base of the pyramid in order to provide those on the front lines the practical skills they need on a daily basis and the capability to provide methods and content to their colleagues in the field.The existing DPOE pyramid classifies skills into three broad categories: executive, managerial, and practical. This approach could provide a logical framework to describe training courses with minimal effort on the part of course providers and to potentially great benefit for students. The DPOE pyramid also lends itself to the description of course materials for those wishing to undertake self-directed learning. This model could be extensible to other repositories of training materials.
• #38: 2 years = 1,500 workshop participants“The course content was very practical – I was immediately able to think of ways in which it applies to my current job…I also appreciated that the course didn’t try to cover too much ground, rather it focused on small steps that can actually make a difference.”
• #39: DPOE maintains an active commitment to the outcomes on the slide.My humble suggestions are that we can continue the conversation on classifying the various types of knowledge transfer and the best ways to offer and promote the necessary training for the various audiences that are, in some instances, in dire need of curation and preservation training.
• #40: DPOE maintains an active commitment to the outcomes on the slide.My humble suggestions are that we can continue the conversation on classifying the various types of knowledge transfer and the best ways to offer and promote the necessary training for the various audiences that are, in some instances, in dire need of curation and preservation training.