The NDSA Excellence Awards were established in 2012 to highlight and commend all forms of creative and meaningful contributions by individual professionals, future stewards, educators, organizations, projects, and sustainability activities to the field of digital preservation. This year’s awards will be presented in person at the Digital Preservation 2023 conference, which will be held in St. Louis, Missouri on November 15-16, 2023.

The Excellence Awards depend upon the vital volunteer participation of the community. We are looking for new members for the Excellence Awards Working Group (EAWG) at both the co-chair and at-large level. Working group members participate to publicize the nomination process, review nominations, select the winners, and work closely with the awardees and NDSA programming to organize the Awards Ceremony. This group typically meets once a month and works as needed between regularly scheduled calls to support the awards process. Most work outside of meetings occurs when reviewing applications (2-4 hours), and then in October leading up to the Awards Ceremony (1-2 hours/week). 

While the NDSA Awards were originally organized on an annual cycle, they are now presented on a biennial basis as the result of a cooperative agreement with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), which operates their own biennial awards program. The NDSA Awards are presented in the odd-numbered years (including this 2023 year!), while the DPC Awards take place in even-numbered years. NDSA and DPC also provide participation on each other’s Awards panels.

This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about the activities and impact of a wide range of exceptional people and projects. We welcome participation from students and early career professionals, as well as from those who have been in the digital preservation field for a while!

If you would like to help on this working group, please fill out this form by Friday, March 3. Working group members must be affiliated with an NDSA member institution and agree to follow the NDSA Code of Conduct.

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