NDSA:Membership

[DRAFT] Membership Model Recommendations

Membership

As an outgrowth of the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), the Alliance is open to government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations and business with commitments and activities in the areas of collecting, preserving, or ensuring long-term access to digital content.

The term of membership is for 3 years.

Recommendations for membership:
• Membership will be at the institutional level, but participation on Working Groups is open to one or more individual participants at the institution.
• Membership should be open and the process by which new members can join is though:

      • Application process; then sponsorship by an organization w/in the NDSA

      • Review and approval by consensus of the membership subcommittee

• Membership may be revoked by a majority vote of member institutions

Eligibility and Requirements

The only responsibility of membership is participation. Members participate in one or more working group by making a sustained contribution to the work of the group for the benefit of the Alliance.

Recommendations for eligibility and requirements: • Members should have demonstrated a commitment to digital preservation. • Members should share the stated values of the Alliance.

Rights and Privileges

Recommendations for rights and privileges: • Voting power for the Alliance will be distributed:

    o Institutions will have one vote on organizational and governance matters affecting the Alliance.
    o Individual participants will have effective decision-making power at the Working Group level. 

• Working Groups (and Action Teams) can produce official work products and decide on work plans and work products autonomously, within their scope and provided that they do so in a manner transparent to the membership:

    o All work products must be announced to the general membership and distributed in draft form well in advance of finalization
    o Written discussion related to work product or plans should be conducted on mailing lists that are archived and open to review by the general membership. 
    o Where discussion is conducted through conference calls, the conference call minutes/notes should be circulated on the mailing list.

• Working groups and their members will have the authority to create Action Teams

    o The work of the Action Teams will be fairly autonomous; however, a process of transparency – a “lightweight charter” - should be created to inform the Working Group members of what work is going on.
    o Action Teams should report back to the Working Group on a semi-regular basis about the work they are doing. 
    o Action Teams could be voted on by the main working group to become more formal if the work was something that was highly valued by the community.

Outstanding questions: • How will we engage the commercial sector while avoiding predatory vendor relationships that are not consistent with the goals of the Alliance? • Do the for-profit orgs have the same status as the not-for-profit orgs? • Who will review applications? • How could international organizations become affiliated with the Alliance?