NDSA:Annual Awards Team

How can the digital stewardship community do more to recognize and encourage innovation in the field?

This team is planning the first slate of annual awards, to be given out at next years July meeting. The group will pick the specific set of awards we want to accept nominations for, decide on how we want to do nominations, and presumably, make the decisions on who will win the first set of awards. For more information, see this blog post on the awards project.

Working Group Members

• Rachel Frick, CLIR, RFrick@CLIR.ORG
• Jennifer Ricker, State Library of North Carolina, jennifer.ricker@ncdcr.gov
• Jason Kucsma, Metropolitan New York Library Council, jkucsma@metro.org
• Barbara Taranto, New York Public Library, btaranto@nypl.org
• Jefferson Bailey, Library of Congress, jbailey@loc.gov

Background on Project

That was the central question posed to the participants of And the Winner Is…, a workshop hosted by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group at the Make it Work Conference.

Participants in this workshop laid the groundwork for the creation of a slate of awards to recognize achievement in digital preservation. To be clear, this is not about monetary awards. First and foremost, the goal of these awards is to help the membership of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance recognize and encourage innovative and important work in the field.

This post invites you into the conversation and discussion from the workshop. What kinds of awards would help recognize and encourage work with important collections, tools, services, organizations and student projects related to digital stewardship and preservation?

At the workshop, participants proposed some categories for awards. These included awards for research and development, innovative practices and valuable events and meetings. One idea involved the creation of “external awards.” That is, awards which draw attention to work of legislators, researchers or organizations who have made significant impacts on the field, but that are not particularly engaged in the digital preservation community. Along with these ideas, the group was particularly excited about awards to recognize and encourage graduate and undergraduate student work. For example, awards for best student project and or best student paper related to digital stewardship.

Beyond the specifics of any award, the workshop attendees agreed that any awards process must involve transparency and consistency. Further, the group agreed that the particular slate of awards could be flexible and iterative, allowing for the creation and retirement of any individual award on an annual basis.

NDSA:Past Award Ideas

Meeting Minutes

• NDSA:Tuesday, January 17, 2012
• NDSA:Wednesday, December 21, 2011
• NDSA:Monday, November 21, 2011

Awards

Awards:

The Annual Innovation Awards were established by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) to recognize and encourage innovation in the field of digital preservation stewardship. These awards highlight and commend creative individuals, projects, organizations, and future stewards demonstrating originality and excellence in their contributions to the field of digital preservation. The program is administered by a committee drawn from members of the NDSA Innovation Working Group.

These awards will focus on recognizing excellence in one or more of the following areas:

• Individuals making a significant, innovative contribution to the digital preservation community
• Projects whose goals or outcomes represent an inventive, meaningful addition to the understanding or processes required for successful, sustainable digital preservation stewardship
• Organizations taking an innovative approach to providing support and guidance to the digital preservation community
• Future stewards, especially students, but including educators, trainers, or curricular endeavors taking a creative approach to advancing knowledge of digital preservation issues and practices

Eligibility:

• Nominations are open to any individual and anyone can be nominated for one of the four awards. Simply put, anyone can nominate anyone and anything. There are no restrictions on affiliation of individuals, time frame of projects or activities, organization type, or student, educator, or program status.

Nomination Requirements:

Nominators need to provide:

• Description: A brief, one-paragraph description of the individual, project, organization, or future steward being nominated and their contribution to digital preservation stewardship. Also please include any relevant URLs, publications, or other documentation or proof of their activities.
• Justification: A brief, one-paragraph justification explaining why the nominee merits recognition and how they contributed to innovation in digital preservation stewardship.
• Contact Information: Nominee contact information, especially an email address. For projects and organizations, a point person’s contact information, email address at minimum, is required.
• Submission: Email the above information to ndsa@loc.gov with “Awards Nomination” in the email subject line.
• Nominator: Name, email and, if desired, affiliation and a brief description, of the person making the nomination. This information will be kept confidential.

Sponsor and Prize:

The Annual Innovation Awards are sponsored by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, a member organization committed to managing digital content for current and long-term use. The National Digital Stewardship Alliance was launched in July 2010 as an initiative of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, which Congress established in 2000 and the Library of Congress administers.

[This paragraph is still in draft form. Language will need to be confirmed within LC]. The award winners will receive a plaque presented to them at the NDSA/NDIIPP Partners meeting at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on July 24-26, 2012. The award includes travel costs to Washington D.C. for winners to attend this meeting to accept the award and winners will be asked to deliver a brief presentation on their work as part of a panel of awards winners. [need to confirm the details of the panel presentation with the meeting planning committee].