The NDSA Leadership Team is pleased to share a summary of activities that occurred across the organization in September 2026, as well as highlight past and upcoming activities, which can also be found on the calendar. If you are looking to catch up, you can read the August update.

NDSA is working to keep the listserv current with members and as a result, email addresses which bounce back will be removed from the list. You can always sign-up for the updated list at any time with your name and current email address. NDSA also has Slack available to members. Sign-up to view channels devoted to specific interest groups or job announcements.

NDSA Digital Preservation 2026 Conference

The conference will be held virtually on November 4-5, 2026 and a preliminary schedule is available on the conference site. Registration is now open through November 2. Registration is available through Eventbrite as a NISO event. Registration fees are $100 for NDSA members, $125 for non-members, and $54 for students. Sharon McMeekin of Preserve Together will be the keynote speaker for the conference.

Organizational Transition Updates

NDSA is pleased to report that the organization is an officially recognized nonprofit with the Internal Revenue Service. Next major milestones for the organizational transition include NDSA’s first official business meeting under the new structure, where the bylaws will be adopted and the Coordinating Committee will be established as the Board of Directors. This meeting will occur at the end of the year.

Coordinating Committee Elections

Voting for the NDSA Coordinating Committee members is currently underway and will run through October 16, 2026. Candidates will be notified in mid-to-late October with an announcement at the 2026 NDSA Digital Preservation conference. Please remember to coordinate with the other NDSA members at your organization to fill out the election ballot.

NDSA Publications Repository

All new NDSA publications will be uploaded to Zenodo and past NDSA content will be migrated to Zenodo over the next few months. Bookmark the NDSA Community in Zenodo to find our publications. While it looks sparse now, expect more content to be added in the coming weeks! Read more about the change in the full blog post.

Working and Interest Group Updates

  • The Excellence Awards Working Group has finalized a revised set of awards categories and is working to update the judging criteria and establish a new questionnaire form that should help the awards submission and review process.
  • The Infrastructure Interest Group held a session with the creators of the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) that generated a great deal of discussion with 37 folks in attendance.
  • The Staffing Survey Working Group has published the 2025 NDSA Staffing Survey Report in September 2026 and already has over 1,000 views and over 300 downloads.
  • The Web Archiving Survey Working Group has finished the first draft of the survey report and are currently working through revisions and editing.

Upcoming Meetings and Opportunities

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

  • The Standards and Practices Interest Group will be hosting a meeting on October 19 at 1:00 pm Eastern Time on the topic of “fire drills” in digital preservation, testing out workflows before there is an emergency.

Check out the Get Involved webpage for ways to deepen your engagement with NDSA. Current opportunities include:

  • The Storage Survey Working Group is currently seeking co-chairs to lead this effort. If you are interested in co-chairing this group please reach out to Leadership at chair [at] ndsa [dot] com to learn more and talk about group formation.
  • The Infrastructure Interest Group is currently seeking a second co-chair. If you are interested in co-chairing this group please reach out to Leadership at chair [at] ndsa [dot] com to learn more.
  • The longstanding Content Interest Group is currently on hiatus. If you are interested in chairing this group please reach out to Leadership at chair [at] ndsa [dot] com to learn more and talk about group formation.