The Excellence Award Working Group is pleased to share the winners for the 2025 NDSA Excellence Awards, which were presented at the 2025 NDSA Digital Preservation Conference.

Submissions for the awards reflected an incredibly impressive range of work and contributions to the community. Many thanks to all who took the time to write and submit your nominations for the 2025 Excellence Awards.

Awards are divided into six categories, four of which were awarded this year: Individual, Educator, Organizations, and Projects.

Congratulations to this year’s awardees!

Individual

Individuals are recognized for making a significant contribution to the digital preservation community through advances in theory or practice.

This year’s awardee in the Individual category is Tyler Walters.

Headshot of Tyler Walters

Since the 1990s, Tyler Walters has led local, regional, and national developments in digital preservation. Most recently, as Dean of University Libraries at Virginia Tech University, Tyler brings together technologies, policies, and people to sustain and preserve digital materials. The teams supported by Tyler have launched multiple preservation and access platforms, serving different types of digital materials and different communities of users, including most recently the Virginia Tech Digital Library. The transparency with which Virginia Tech’s Digital Preservation policy and procedures are publicly documented are a model for digital preservation practitioners at other institutions. Likewise, Tyler’s work has established new library units and positions to strengthen efforts in digital curation and preservation. Tyler’s nominators noted nine positions created during an overall expansion of digital library and preservation efforts, all of which are connected in part or in whole to the ongoing work of digital preservation.

In addition to his work at Virginia Tech, Tyler has demonstrated sustained leadership in the wider digital preservation field. He is active on the board of the Academic Preservation Trust (AP Trust), and has served as Board Chair since 2022. Tyler also had a founding role in the creation of the NDSA, where he served as the inaugural chair of the NDSA Coordinating Committee. He has also served on boards of directors of DuraSpace (chair, 2018-19), Educopia Institute, and LYRASIS. Apart from organizational work, he is active in outreach and education. He was the lead author of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) publication New Roles for New Times: Digital Curation for Preservation, and has taught courses through the NEDCC, the University of Arizona, and San Jose State University.

These experiences, and those at Virginia Tech, emphasize Tyler’s commitment to collaboration in digital preservation–across staff roles and departments, and between institutions both nationally and internationally.

Congratulations to Tyler!

Educator

The Educator Award recognizes academics, trainers, and curricular endeavors promoting effective and inventive approaches to digital preservation education through academic programs, partnerships, professional development opportunities, and curriculum development.

This year’s awardee for the Educator Award is Folasade Adepoju.

Headshot of Folasade Adepoju

Folasade is a librarian, a union leader, literacy advocate, and champion for education, gender rights, and environmental sustainability. Currently serving as Assistant Director in the Public Services department at the National Library of Nigeria Headquarters in Abuja, she has dedicated her career to advancing climate literacy, information accessibility, and library development across Nigeria. Folasade is being recognized for her accomplishments in advancing digital preservation education and advocacy at the national and international level. Through a series of webinars initiated in November 2024, Folasade designs and delivers impactful professional development programs, integrating digital preservation principles into academic curricula.

She has led initiatives like the “Unlocking millions of Nigerian memories for digital preservation,” which mobilized resources, forged partnerships, and implemented scalable strategies to safeguard Nigeria’s digital heritage. Her hands-on teaching, collaborative approach with other colleagues in the digital preservation field, and her ability to convey complex frameworks in accessible terms have significantly strengthened the capacity of practitioners across under-resourced regions—especially in Nigeria and broader West Africa. Her work has reached over 500 library and information students in Nigeria, as well as 170 librarians from 7 countries.

Folasade is also lauded for her mentorship. One nominator writes, “Folasade [has] gone beyond her professional duties… to inspire and mentor countless individuals, empowering them with the skills and knowledge to carry forward the crucial work of preserving our digital heritage. Her efforts are not just about bridging the knowledge and methodology gap but about changing lives, especially for those from underrepresented communities, forgotten heroes, and histories that have long been left [out of the historical record].”

Congratulations to Folasade!

Organization

Organizations are recognized for innovative approaches to providing support and guidance to the digital preservation community.

This year’s awardee in the Organizations category is the Data Rescue Project.

In the United States, under the current administration, the federal government is removing, altering, and threatening the long-term access to federally funded research created by and for the American public. The individuals involved with the Data Rescue Project (DRP) saw an opportunity for action. As the nominator noted, “the grassroots response to this event, exemplified by the Data Rescue Project (DRP), has prevented the crisis from becoming a disaster, and deserves recognition. While previous changes in administration have resulted in modifications to websites, that information loss was mitigated by the End of Term crawl through the Internet Archive. However, this approach is insufficient for datasets.” Since February 2025, the DRP has served as a central support for those safeguarding US digital government data resources. This includes coordinating volunteers, enabling communication across collaborators, educating participants on robust data curation practices, and advocating for the long term preservation of and access to federally funded research. Through their volunteer coordination, documentation on data curation for data rescue, Data Rescue Tracker, and Data Rescue Event toolkit, the DRP is setting forth a playbook for future data rescue moments.

Headshots of DRP steering committee members
Top row, left to right: Sebastian Majstorovic, Lynda Kellam, Lena Bohman
Middle row, l-r: Tess Grynoch, Amy Nurnberger
Bottom row, l-r: Halle Burns, Kathleen Burlingame, Mikala Narlock

The DRP is a strong advocate for the responsible stewardship of these datasets – and highlighting the impact losing these datasets would have. Through frequent interviews with media nationally and internationally, capturing data user stories related to specific datasets, and maintaining several communication channels, the DRP is a vocal supporter of data rescue and preservation.

Congratulations to the Data Rescue project!

Project

Projects are recognized for activities whose goals or outcomes represent an inventive, meaningful addition to the understanding or processes required for successful, sustainable digital preservation stewardship.

This year’s awardee in the Projects category is BACKER: Building Archival Capacity for Keeping Electronic Records.

Map showing BACKER/SERI participants across 56 state, territory and DC archives

The project represents an effort by the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) and State Electronic Records Institute’s (SERI) work to build on years of previous SERI work, extending the impact of electronic records management and digital preservation education and training among the 56 state, territory, and District of Columbia archives. This work was specifically designed to increase capacities within these agencies, and was designed to be accomplished in a 4-year timeframe which responded to the time and budgetary constraints of CoSA members.

The BACKER project delivered to CoSA consultants and members updated self-assessment tools and best practices guidelines for state archives’ digital preservation programs; provided direct assistance and mentoring to improve digital preservation programs, including digitization planning and related policy development; accelerated development and implementation of digital preservation planning and cultural competence awareness and skill-building through educational and training programs; and produced a robust series of accompanying publications in a variety of formats that facilitate continued learning and sharing among archives staff, allied organizations, and other stakeholders.

BACKER coordinator Nick Connizzo wrote in the project’s final report, “How state and territorial archives prioritize provenance and authenticity, reliability and auditability, and digital accessibility will have a significant effect on citizens’ ability to trust the information they share with and receive from their governments, and therefore how they trust government itself. Archives and the records they possess can be the foundations of government trust.”

It is within this lens of transparency and public record that these already impressive professional resources and tools take on an even greater impact.

Congratulations to the BACKER project team!

Excellence Awards Working Group

The 2025 Excellence Awards Working Group was led by co-chairs Jessica Venlet (University of Michigan Library) and Matt McEniry (Texas Tech University Library), with members Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez (UC Irvine Libraries), John Dewees (University of Rochester), Brian Dietz (NC State University Libraries), Doreen Dixon (Clemson University Library), Brenna Edwards (Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin), [Matthew] Farrell (Duke University Libraries), Sarah Middleton (Digital Preservation Coalition Representative), and Lauren Work (Yale University Library).