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:      
         Content models
         Content packaging
         Content transfer
         Digital preservation strategies and techniques
         Digital preservation terms and concepts
         File formats
         Encodings
         Metadata exchange
         Metadata schemas
         Repository architecture 
         Repository certification and trustworthiness   
         Repository operations
         Repository policies

- 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:

Our original goal was to to create an online resource that could be continually updated by the NDSA Standards and Practices group and accessed by the general public. As of December 2011, our current, somewhat broader plan, is:

to develop a Digital Preservation "WikiProject" within Wikipedia as an umbrella for creating and improving information about digital preservation generally and preservation standards and best practices;
redevelop the current Wikipedia "Digital Preservation" page so that it can serve as an appropriate launch page to more detailed information about standards and best practices;
to create / update pages describing current standards and best practices in the field of digital preservation;
to consult with others involved in digital preservation to encourage their input and contributions to the effort;
to report back to the NDSA steering committee with updates and proposals as to how to continue this effort into the future.

Links to current work are posted here:

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