This year will continue to be one of change for NDSA as we proceed with our transition to a new host organization. The Leadership Transition Team is working out the myriad details involved, and as an organization we hope to be as transparent and communicative about this process as possible. As a result, we aim to publish monthly posts summarizing recent and upcoming NDSA activities as seen on our calendar. These updates will include summaries of what actions are being taken to continue to steer NDSA towards stability and long-term success as well as highlighting the ongoing work that the invaluable community volunteers have been doing in the NDSA interest, steering, and working groups.

Leadership Changes

The beginning of a new year means lots of changes to co-chairs for various groups within NDSA.

  • Lauren Goodley will be joining the Coordinating Committee for a two-year term that arose due to a vacancy
  • Kathryn Michaelis and Tabitha Samuel will be co-chairing this year’s virtual NDSA DigiPres conference
  • Jacqueline Devereaux and Matt McEniry will be co-chairing the Levels of Preservation Steering Group
  • Melissa Wertheimer and Elena Colon-Marrero will be co-chairing the Web Archiving Working Group
  • Margo Padilla will be one of two co-chairs for the newly formed Events Steering Group (second co-chair to be announced)
  • John Dewees was elected as the inaugural Secretary for NDSA, a position that was created in the 2025 bylaws revision

Thank you to all those who served on interest, steering, and working groups in 2025, your work is incredibly appreciated!

Organizational Transition Updates

One of the most important aspects of the host organization transition is ensuring a seamless shift of the NDSA-All listserv, which acts as the primary means of communication for the organization. We are slated to fully move away from CLIR’s infrastructure to a new listserv provider by the end of February. Currently NDSA is working with NISO on configuration and migration of the existing email list. It is not expected that current subscribers will need to take any action to sign up for the new listserv. We will communicate about the explicit cutover date and any changes that might be expected in terms of how one posts to the email list post-migration.

The NDSA website has been transferred to a new hosting infrastructure. We are currently working on updating webpages. If you see any broken links or other errors, please report those to the chairs of the Communications and Publications Working Group. For those using the NDSA Slack, that remains unchanged.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is once again accepting grant applications for FY 2026 which are due in March. NDSA Leadership is currently in the process of exploring possibilities associated with this resumption of granting activities by the agency.

Interest and Working Group Updates

Interest Groups

  • The Standards and Practices Interest Group held an event on January 12 with Kate Murray and Abbey Potter from the Library of Congress on the topic of C2PA and content provenance and authenticity. Meeting minutes and a temporary recording are available to view.

Working Groups

  • The Fixity Survey Working Group is currently editing the final report.
  • The Levels of Preservation Working Group is in the midst of ramping up a new revision with a focus on incorporating environmental sustainability more deeply into the resource.
  • The Staffing Survey Working Group is continuing to work on data visualization related to the survey results as well as drafting the report.
  • The Conference Planning Working Group has begun in earnest with a call for planning committee members which remains open until February 13. Please fill out the form to help out in putting on this marquee NDSA event in 2026!

Upcoming Meetings

Use the NDSA Calendar to look for events of interest and find out when NDSA Leadership meetings are taking place.

  • The Infrastructure Interest Group will be hosting their first meeting of the year on March 16 and has distributed a poll to determine what topics should be covered in the 2026 meetings.