NDSA:November 7, 2011 Standards Working Group Notes and Agenda

NDSA Standards Working Group

November 7, 2011

WebEx Meeting Notes

WebEx recording is here: https://issevents.webex.com/issevents/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=49484757&rKey=cdb7de22e27e8312

In attendance:

Jimi Jones (co-chair)

Andrea Goethals (co-chair)

Kate Murray

Karen Cariani

Tracy Popp

Amy Kirchhoff

Stephen Davis

Please add your name if I’ve left it out.

Our first bit of business was to take a look at the Broadcast Wave page on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Wave_Format). Andrea added some content to the page in the form of the small box in the upper right. She put as many fields from our Google Docs spreadsheet as Wikipedia’s template for the information box would allow. She compiled a list of the information she was not allowed by the template to add. Some items she was not able to add were document type, category, standard status, cost of the specification and others.

Andrea claimed it didn’t take long to enter the information in the box once she knew how the Wikipedia editing worked. We took a look at the template she used to put together the information box. The template is used by Wikipedians for file formats. In the discussion that ensued we agreed that pages for digital file formats would be relatively easy to edit and add information to but other kinds of digital preservation standards and practices would be harder to conform.

Wikipedia pages have a tab for “Discussion.” We thought it could be possible to put use and best practices-type information in the Discussion area. Other options would be to create a portal page and put that kind of info on there (more on that in a moment) or create a “Best Practices in Digital Preservation” page for Wikipedia and link from it.

The conversation turned to portals. Andrea sent out an email to the NDSA Standards listserv saying that in her research she has found that portals are not that discoverable – not as discoverable as straight-up Wikipedia pages – in searches outside Wikipedia. In our conversations with Sarah Steirch, Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Archives of American Art, we found out that portals aren’t used that much anymore.

Andrea took some time to show us the metrics that Wikipedia compiles for pages about “quality” (information about citations on pages) as well as the pages’ growth over time. These stats could be very important to our group as we gauge interest in the digital preservation-related pages over time.

After some discussion the group decided that the best way to proceed may be to use the Digital Preservation entry on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation) and conform it to our needs. We can also point to digipres-related standards from there. In effect, this page would become our portal. A cursory glance during the meeting showed that it has a considerable amount of high-level information already and it receives pretty regular hits.

Stephen recommended that anyone on the group who is interested should take a look at this Digital Preservation page and see what’s there and, more importantly, what’s not there. Stephen’s going to take the first crack at this and share his thoughts on the Standards listserv but we should all join in with thoughts. This will have the added benefit of spurring conversation on the listserv, which is always a good thing!

Our other bit of homework is to start compiling a list of existing digipres-related Wikipedia pages. Jimi will make a space on the NDSA Standards wiki for this list. Everyone please add to it so we can see what’s already there and what needs to be!

And a side note – Martha Anderson asked each group if they’d like to send an emissary join the NDSA session at CNI. Stephen Davis expressed interest but Rachel Frick will be presenting briefly about our group and the state of our survey work. A big thanks to Rachel (and thanks to Stephen for being willing to serve)!