View source for NDSA:Content WG April 4, 2012 Meeting Minutes

DRAFT Minutes for NDSA Content Working Group 

4/4/2012

==Attendees==


==Report from the NDSA Leadership Meeting ==

Abbie and Cathy attended the meeting last Thursday and Friday. It was the first time that working group co-chairs and Coordinating Committee got together in one room for 1 ½ days. Discussion covered how things are going, what working groups are doing, where we could use support from Coordinating Committee. Abbie and Cathy shared the challenges our working group has experienced as we’ve grown to over 70; we’re the largest, but also have fairly good attendance on our calls and with our content teams.

Outcomes of overall meeting include having press kit to guide members in talking about NDSA’s purpose, plans, and accomplishments – common topics to address rather than working in silos. The Outreach Team will work on that and make it available to all members. An action list will help drive what work the Coordinating Committee can/should be doing for the organization. Watch for more details on NDSA-all listserv.

==Report from the Registry Action Team==

Daniel sent an update over the list. There’s been a bit of concern at low number of submissions to registry, and worry that levels were stumbling block due to uncertainty or embarrassment. We’ve been talking about having interns help feed info into the registry, and also looking again at levels and at each item listed in the levels and expand upon them so that it becomes an internal assessment tool for deciding where we’re at and what resources are needed to get to a higher level . Levels of preservation were also discussed at the NDSA Leadership Meeting last week. The Infrastructure Team was interested in looking at the levels more closely and building something around them that could benefit the membership more widely. We need to figure out where to go with that next.

Margie agreed that expansion/better description of levels will encourage more libraries to participate.

Christie suggested exploring the possibility of not making levels required, just get people to register content and over time, with assistance of interns, fill in the gaps. Levels are a stumbling block because they seem to be all or nothing – you have to meet everything in the level.

Glen reported that he’s involved in another survey of state archives in U.S. with regard to preservation activities; it’s even more complex in state archives to identify who’s doing what, and then to go beyond that and try to figure out a standard entry is even more intensive in terms of staff.

Michael agreed that assigning levels can be a really helpful exercise, but for some institutions it’s too big an exercise.

Abby Rumsey suggested identifying activities in each level as being benchmarks of excellence as a way to acknowledge progress, or things that are not relevant/priority for mission. It could just be that libraries and archives look at the set of things in each class/level and pick out the priorities that are highest for their mission and assess themselves against themselves rather than engage in a self-defeating one-size-fits-all exercise.

Tracy questioned the fundamental goal of the registry – is it more about content or about practices across the organization? Abbie explained that the original goal was to identify content, but then we had to grapple with what you mean when you say you’ve preserved content. Levels maybe should not be part of the registry at all, which is why there’s interest in it being elevated to cross-NDSA. 

Michael agreed that we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. How easy can we make the registry so the basic info can get out there without burdening institutions with extensive self-evaluation process?

Abby reiterated that it should be possible to come up with cluster of things that characterize each level and then each institution can identify sets that apply to them at that level.

Glen suggested looking at Charles Dollar’s Data Maturity levels because that’s what they’re using for the latest survey of state archives. It spells out 10 or 11 different categories of preservation and offers levels in each one of those categories, along with a point system. David wondered why we weren’t using the TRAC checklist. Rachel pointed out that it’s more complicated than the levels as we currently state them. Others said that Dollar’s system is more complex than TRAC.

Abbie suggested moving this discussion to the listserv, where Kris and Daniel can provide input.

==Report from the Content Teams==

John (Geospatial) – Didn’t meet last month. Will meet end of this month to further refine scope and areas of focus – they have more than enough input (several pages of comments), now need to figure out what to concentrate on/prioritize.

Glen (Government) – Started at beginning talking about issues with regard to electronic records risk. Seemed to be an emphasis on working with records creators to better refine what we get so that we can preserve it better. The front end was of major concern. Sense that respondents are daunted by all of the things to be concerned about – where do you start? Constructed sample document of purpose/objectives/statement but haven’t yet received comments. Scheduling next meeting for end of month.

Abbie (News, Media & Journalism) – Met once and came up with categories to pursue; narrowing it down. Citizen journalism, born-digital journalism content case study that came through from UNT. Don’t have another meeting set but will be working over email on those topic areas.

Christie (Science, Tech, Medicine, Mathematics ) – Met last week and identified some areas of at-risk content; still in brainstorming mode and plan to meet after using the Wiki to identify different types of data, develop case studies.

Social Sciences: Think they have met at least once but haven’t heard anything lately.

Erik Rau volunteered to facilitate History. Jon volunteered to be the catalyst to get meeting going with Arts & Humanities group.

==Next Meeting ==
Next meeting will be June 6 at 11am. There will also be an in-person meeting at NDSA meeting on Wednesday afternoon July 25, for which they’re also trying to get a conference call set up. Will send out details.