NDSA:Standards and Best Practices Working Group

Standards and Practices Working Group

NDSA:Standards and Practices Working Group Charter (December 10, 2010)

Current Members

A list of current members is posted here: NDSA:Standards and Practices Working Group Members.

Statement of Purpose

The Standards and Practices Working Group will work to facilitate a community-wide understanding of the role and benefit of standards in digital preservation and how to use them effectively to ensure durable and usable collections. The Group will also develop, recommend, promote, and disseminate information about effective methods for selecting, organizing, describing, managing, preserving and serving digital content, in collaboration with other individuals and organizations where appropriate.

Current Scope of Work

Working group members may initiate and engage in new work at any time by forming Action Teams focused on specific projects or tasks. In addition, the Working Group will conduct the following project.

Survey and document the digital preservation standards landscape

Objectives:

Identify and describe existing digital preservation standards and best practices
Identify opportunities for collaboration with non-NDSA individuals and organizations who are currently working on digital preservation standards and best practices
Identify gaps in digital preservation standards and best practices coverage that could be addressed by this working group in future activities

Scope:

Compilation of existing digital preservation standards and best practices, including but not limited to:
- Authoring individuals and organizations
- Status of standard or best practice
- Description of standard or best practice
- Characterization of the standard or best practice

     Categories: 
         Architecture         
         Certification and trustworthiness
         Content and data models
         File formats
         Encodings
         Metadata exchange
         Metadata schemas
         Operations
         Packaging 
         Policies       
         Strategies and techniques
         Terms and concepts
         Transfer

- Examples of where and how they are used
- Related documents and Web sites
Analysis and synthesis
Identify gaps, areas of potential collaboration, etc.
Publication of survey as an online resource

Deliverables:

Online resource (perhaps a wiki?) that can be continually updated by the NDSA Standards and Practices group and accessed by the general public
Report

Schedule

Early Spring 2011: Project planning
Late Spring 2011: Rough draft of report
Summer 2011: “Live” online resource
Summer 2011: Report on work at the NDSA annual conference

Logistics & methodology

Progress will be reported via the regular working group phone meetings.
Discussions will happen on listserv and via emails and phone calls as needed
NDSA Standards and Practices working group wiki space will be used to collate resources and work on the deliverables
A Google Doc Spreadsheet may work better to collate resources because of its support for collaborative editing and column sorting.

Participants

Lead: Small group of Working Group members?
Responsibilities: Manage the project (keep it on-track, provide status updates), Design contribution process (e.g. who can contribute, editorial review process?, how to publicize contribution process), Design information framework (e.g. the elements to record about each standard, controlled vocabulary values), Perform analysis on collated standards and best practices, Write summary report
Participants: Entire Working Group
Responsibilities: Identify and describe relevant standards and best practices