Groups

The NDSA has established Interest Groups focusing on broad areas of digital preservation, out of which smaller Working Groups often emerge. All NDSA member organizations commit to providing participants for one or more groups and may use the Working Group Schedule to plan for their participation. Questions about which group you should join? Chat with the Interest Group chairs, or send an email to ndsa.digipres@gmail.com.

Getting Involved

Anyone from an NDSA member organization is welcome to join one or more groups. Opportunities are also available to help lead Interest Group and Working group activities. For more information on the responsibilities and expectations of a co-chair review Co-Chairing an NDSA Group.

Join NDSA Slack

Join the NDSA Slack workspace to communicate and collaborate with NDSA. Each Interest Group has it’s own public channel.

Group Formation

NDSA participants may form Interest Groups (IGs) and Working Groups (WGs) at will, in order to discuss mutual interests, and advance joint projects. Details on the process for forming a new group, group requirements and expectations are provided by the NDSA Leadership team.

Interest Groups

There is one Interest Group meeting a month, with the three groups working on a rotating schedule. The schedule for each of the Interest Groups is provided on their webpages. Due to the changing nature of the group membership lists, calendar invites are not sent out. We encourage you to create a recurring invite to your own calendar, using the information found in the meeting agenda/notes document for the group you are interested in.

Content

  • Focusing on the selection, discovery and preservation of digital content. For example, the group members are conducting surveys around US web archiving practices and developing case studies around a variety of types of content to share compelling stories that demonstrate the value of digital preservation in our communities.

Standards and Practices

  • Promoting effective methods for digital content selection, organization, preservation and access. Current activities include work to enhance coverage information and resources on born digital preservation concerns and criteria in Wikipedia.

Infrastructure

  • Working to identify and share emerging practices around the development and maintenance of tools and systems for curation and preservation. For example, the Infrastructure Interest Group is studying and reporting on member approaches to design and operation of large scale storage systems.

Working Groups

Working Groups are created on an as needed basis. Once formed, groups may perform a one-time activity, a cyclical activity, or an ongoing activity. This activity level is listed after the Working Group name below. Further details about each group is provided on their individual pages.

Climate Watch (ongoing)

  • A group started to create annotated bibliographies on recent literature, news, and reports related to climate change and its impact on digital preservation with the goal of creating and adding to an ongoing list of potential risks climate change poses to digital preservation work.

Communications and Publications (ongoing)

  • Working with the Coordinating Committee and Group Chairs to assist with internal and external communications, blog posts, website updates, and editing and publishing NDSA reports and other materials.

Conference Planning Program Committee (annually)

  • Working to plan all aspects of the DigiPres Conference. Including: choosing theme, reviewing conference proposals, selecting keynotes and more.

Excellence Awards (biennially)

  • Administering awards that highlight and commend individuals, educators, future stewards, organizations, projects, and sustainability activities demonstrating significant engagement with the theory and practice of long-term digital preservation stewardship at a level of national or international importance. Awards are given out at DigiPres conferences occurring in odd-numbered years.

Fixity (cyclical)

  • Created to address the “…clear need for use-case driven examples of best practices for fixity in particular system designs and configurations established to meet particular preservation requirements” raised in the 2015 NDSA National Agenda. This group produced the 2017 Fixity Survey Report as a result of their work. A 2021 survey is in progress.

Levels of Preservation (ongoing)

  • Working to provide the methodology by which the important NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation document can be adapted more readily—taking in the broadest possible feedback in the process. Created the Levels of Digital Preservation V2.0 in October 2019. Work continues.

Membership Working Group

  • The Membership Working Group was created to address the results of the Membership Task Force with the goal of addressing the findings.

NDSA Agenda (cyclical)

  • Revising and updating the NDSA Agenda to integrate the perspective of dozens of experts and hundreds of institutions to provide funders and executive decision‐makers insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity, and key areas for funding, research and development to ensure that today’s valuable digital content remains accessible and comprehensible in the future, supporting a thriving economy, a robust democracy, and a rich cultural heritage.

Staffing Survey (cyclical)

  • Conducts a survey about staffing practices and needs. Reports have been published in 2012, 2017, and 2022.

Storage Survey (cyclical)

  • Works to collect information about storage infrastructures over time. The 2019 Storage Survey Working Group was convened in late 2018 to gather new data on preservation storage practices. The goal of the 2019 survey collected updated information in order to compare to the NDSA 2011 and 2013 surveys, but to gather information on how new technologies or standards have impacted preservation storage.

Web Archiving (cyclical)

  • Conducts a survey about web archiving activities to organizations engaged in web archiving or in the process of planning a web archive to take the NDSA Web Archiving Survey. Reports have been published in 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2023.

Former Groups

The groups listed below were retired by NDSA Leadership and are no longer active. Their pages are provided as reference to past activities.

Innovation Interest Group

  • The Innovation Interest Group is no longer active. Activities of this working group were suspended in 2016. The Innovation Interest Group has a more than six-year history of activity under the umbrella of NDSA. Its focus involved encouraging and sharing innovative methods of digital preservation practices and technologies. For example, the innovation group highlighted innovative projects and practitioners through a series of published interviews. The group also developed and ran an awards program to recognize groundbreaking work in digital stewardship, which is now administered by the Innovation Awards Working Group.

Outreach Interest Group

  • The Outreach Interest Group is no longer active. Activities of this working group were suspended in 2014. Its focus was on building relationships with stakeholder communities and preparing and sharing digital preservation information resources. The group worked to support the release of the 2014 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship, published the Digital Preservation in a Box outreach toolkit, supported regional NDSA meetings, and developed tools to make it easier for partners to share information about their work. The work done by this Interest Group is being done by other Working Groups and the NDSA Leadership Team. Please contact the Leadership Team with ideas and suggestions.

Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment

  • The Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment Task Force is no longer active.The Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment was assembled to explore the questions of membership and engagement raised by the NDSA’s evolving scope and role within the global digital preservation ecosystem. This group was active in 2021.
[page last updated: December 2022]