NDSA:Outreach Mission Action Team

Return to NDSA:Outreach Working Group Home

Description of Work

The “Mission” Action Team will explore the high-level mission that drives a digital preservation awareness campaign. What is the dominant message that the NDSA hopes to propagate regarding the preservation of digital information? Are different messages (or variations on a single message) necessary to reach different audiences?

New name and additional work description from 12/10/2010 Outreach meeting minutes:

Statement of Purpose Team, What is the overarching mission, goal and message of this campaign? How will the overarching message be sliced and diced to appeal to different audiences? How will we know when we have succeeded in fulfilling our mission? What overall and far-reaching changes in how digital preservation “operates” in homes, schools and libraries are possible?

Action Team Members

• LEADER: Daniel Cornwall, Alaska State Library (daniel.cornwall@alaska.gov)
• Pete Watters, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, pwatters@lib.az.us
• Deborah Rossum, SCOLA, drossum@SCOLA.ORG

If you are interesting in joining this Action Team, please contact Daniel Cornwall to sign up.

Ideas

This section is a space for people to brainstorm about either what our message should be like or how to go about crafting it.

• Any message we put out should have some simple step our audience can take to improve preservation of their resources.
• We will likely need a slightly different message to each target audience.
• It might be better for the message to reflect future gain (you'll be able to have "this" if you act) than future loss (you'll lose "this" if you don't act).
• That said, objects now known to be lost (say, organizations' first websites circa 1992-94) might be effective examples of what's at stake.
• Maybe it's just because I'm paying attention now, but I'm seeing a lot of buzz on personal digital preservation, mostly from LC. Should we distill these tweets, articles, web pages to discern their common message?

Digital Preservation Drivers

What is the highest-level concept in the digital preservation universe?

Save
Preserve
Sustain

Whatever we decide it is, all the other concepts should fall under it. So, if, for example, we decide "save" is the highest-level concept, then all the items below should be the high-level motivations that would compel someone to save something...

"Retrieval"

Memory
Evidence
Maintain

"Accumulate"

Reserve
Hoard
Monopolize
Sustain
Retain

"Share"

Educate
Knowledge
Help
Rescue
Innovation
Creativity
Competitiveness
Engagement
Communication
Leadership
Efficiency

"Invest"

"Investment" has a slightly different meaning than "saving." With investment you expect the value to grow over time, while "saving" may be limited to the "security" of the item. So, why would someone invest?

Growth
Wealth
Modernization
Hedge
Value

"Avoid Loss"

"Loss" is a different motivation than either of the two above. It's the negative emotional side of "save." Included in this somewhere is also the idea that people are compelled to save by outside forces. A list...

Fear
Culpability
Risk
Defense
Escape
Guard
Aversion
Salvation
Protect
Safety
Change
Prevention

Actions

If we are successful in getting our message across to people, what do we want them to do?

Nothing
Riot
Think about the issue
Call our toll-free hotline
Learn more
Actively preserve something
Reorganize their hard drive
Buy a product
Give money

Resources

Made to Stick - Companion website to book Made to Stick about crafting compelling messages.