NDSA:Values Statement

Values Statement

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance and all member organizations are bound as a community by the following values.

Collaboration

Collaborative work is the centering value of the Alliance, it is a value shared by all members and a priority in work with all organizations and associations. Approaching digital stewardship collaboratively allows the NDSA to coordinate effort, avoid duplicate work, build a community of practice, develop new preservation strategies, flexibly respond to a changing economic landscape, and build relationships to increase capacity to manage content beyond institutional boundaries.

Stewardship

Members of the NDSA are committed to managing digital content for current and long-term use. The members of the NDSA are the entrusted keepers of the digital content that comprises our national history and empowers us as leaders in the global knowledge economy. Individually, these organizations actively oversee the administration of digital resources; as an Alliance, we commit to protecting our nation's cultural, scientific, scholarly, and business heritage.

Diversity

The NDSA is a collaborative effort to preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of current and future citizens. We value the range of experience, the potential for innovation, and the fault-tolerance that heterogeneity brings. We believe the preservation of digital information is a challenge that extends beyond the boundaries of domain and that by engaging across different communities we strengthen the nation’s digital preservation practices and increase the likelihood of preserving data now and into the future.

Exchange

Members of the Alliance encourage the open exchange of ideas, services, and software. This leverages the commitments of each member to increase the capacity of the entire stewardship network. In this way the act of participation and engagement result in innovations and benefits that can be shared by all.