Each member organization is required to identify and provide one or more representatives to participate in NDSA activities. Multiple representatives are encouraged.
Representatives from NDSA member organizations agree to:
Focusing on the selection, discovery and preservation of digital content. For example, the group members are conducting surveys around US web archiving practices and developing case studies around a variety of types of content to share compelling stories that demonstrate the value of digital preservation in our communities.
Promoting effective methods for digital content selection, organization, preservation and access. Current activities include work to enhance coverage information and resources on born digital preservation concerns and criteria in Wikipedia.
Working to identify and share emerging practices around the development and maintenance of tools and systems for curation and preservation. For example, the Infrastructure Interest Group is studying and reporting on member approaches to design and operation of large scale storage systems.
Working Groups
Working Groups are created on an as needed basis. Once formed, groups may perform a one-time activity, a cyclical activity, or an ongoing activity. This activity level is listed after the Working Group name below. Further details about each group is provided on their individual pages.
Working with the Coordinating Committee and Group Chairs to assist with internal and external communications, blog posts, website updates, and editing and publishing NDSA reports and other materials.
Administering awards that highlight and commend creative individuals, projects, organizations, and future stewards demonstrating originality and excellence in their contributions to the field of digital preservation. Awards are given out at the DigiPres conference.
Created to address the “…clear need for use-case driven examples of best practices for fixity in particular system designs and configurations established to meet particular preservation requirements” raised in the 2015 NDSA National Agenda. This group produced the 2017 Fixity Survey Report as a result of their work. A 2021 survey is in progress.
Working to provide the methodology by which the important NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation document can be adapted more readily—taking in the broadest possible feedback in the process. Created the Levels of Digital Preservation V2.0 in October 2019. Work continues.
The Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment was assembled to explore the questions of membership and engagement raised by the NDSA’s evolving scope and role within the global digital preservation ecosystem.
Revising and updating the NDSA Agenda to integrate 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.
Works to collect information about storage infrastructures over time. The 2019 Storage Survey Working Group was convened in late 2018 to gather new data on preservation storage practices. The goal of the2019 surveycollected updated information in order to compare to the NDSA2011and2013surveys, but to gather information on how new technologies or standards have impacted preservation storage.
Conducts a survey about web archiving activities to organizations engaged in web archiving or in the process of planning a web archive to take the NDSA Web Archiving Survey. Reports have been published in 2011, 2013, and 2017.