The NDSA Levels of Preservation Steering group would like to find out more about particular scenarios in which the Levels are being used. This information will help others who are using the Levels and may also inform future work. Rather than looking for full and detailed case studies, we hope to gather real life activities from a range of different organizations using the Levels answering specific questions and scenarios of interest to the community. 

We are interested in the following questions:

  • How you routinely use the NDSA Levels? – Is it on a regular schedule? Who does it? Who is the information communicated to? What documentation is maintained?
  • At what level of granularly you use the NDSA Levels? – Do you do just one assessment for all your holdings, or do you do it multiple times for different departments of types of content?
  • How does the NDSA Levels fit in with the bigger picture of certification and maturity modeling for your organization? – Do you use the Levels alongside other certification standards, maturity models or self-assessment tools? What else do you use and how do these different tools work together to help you move forward?
  • Are the NDSA Levels used to help project the financial cost of digital preservation? – Do you do this at the level of individual objects, by collection or for the entire repository? How is this information generated? How is it used in program planning? Who contributes to this exercise?
  • Are environmental considerations are taken into account in your digital preservation work? – How does this impact your use of the Levels?

We welcome contributions no matter how big or small. You are welcome to respond to just one of the scenarios or answer any of the questions that are relevant to you. If multiple scenarios apply to you or your organization, feel free to fill out the form multiple times addressing one question at a time if that is easier.  

The information shared with us will be collated and published in a series of themed blog posts. If you wish your contribution to be published anonymously that is fine too!

Please contribute your answers in the Google form by May 1, 2023.

If you would prefer to share your thoughts on any of these questions in a community chat session, we will be hosting our next Levels Office Hour session on this topic on 19th April at 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) so do drop in and share your thoughts (more details and joining instructions can be found here).

We very much look forward to hearing from you!

~ The Levels of Preservation Steering Group

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