NDSA:Levels of preservation

Steps and Targets: Defining Tiered Levels of Digital Preservation

One Sentence Description: Infrastructure, Innovation, Content and Standards Working Group members will define a brief set of guidelines on tiered levels of digital preservation.

Statement of the Problem and Goal to Address Problem: There is both very basic digital preservation information, like NDIIPP’s personal archiving materials, as well as extensive and substantial requirements for being recognized as a trusted digital repository. However, there is little solid guidance on how an organization should prioritize its resource allocation between these two ends of the spectrum. The goal of this project is to develop a tiered set of recommendations for prioritizing enhancements to digital preservation systems (defined broadly to include organizational and technical infrastructure). This group will define targets for at least three distinct levels of criteria for digital preservation systems, at the bottom level providing guidance to “get the boxes off the floor” and at each escalating level offering prioritized suggestions for how organizations can get the most out of their resources for additional preservation assurance at each subsequent level.

Strategic Value:

• Focused on a clear gap identified by the working group chairs and coordinating committee.
• Focused on pragmatic best usage of resources as opposed to ideal situations.
• Resulting resource is of value to members at each end of the spectrum.

Required Resources: Time of a small number of internal members. Potentially involves external or specific targeted internal review.

Roadmap:

1. CompletedHold conference call to discuss levels documents created by content team on an infrastructure call. See Digital Preservation Levels and Digital Preservation Levels Chartsee also MNHS Digital File Preservation Options Good, Better, Best doc
2. Iteratively revise draft document and invite member feedback
3. Identify key requirements documents and guidance documents to link to for features at individual levels
4. Hold workshop at NDSA conference to present and critique the document
5. Invite particular targeted individuals to review it
6. Decide on dissemination plan and disseminate it
7. Identify a future date at which an NDSA action team should revisit this project

Dissemination of Knowledge: Once finished we can publish this as a short report on digitalpreservation.gov, put up a blog post announcing it on the Library of Congress digital preservation blog, and group members can send out an announcement about it to various listservs.

Signifiers of Success: Completed document. Ideally, an indication of broader success would be seeing this document referred to in a range of plans and guidance.