NDSA:Outreach Meeting Minutes 05-14-12

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NDSA Outreach WG conference call minutes

Monday May 14, 2012, 3:00 p.m. EDT

Agenda

• Announcements
• Reminder: Follow http://twitter.com/ndsa2 and use the hashtag #NDSA2 in their tweets.
• Request for Communications Experts to review the draft Communications Plan
• Action Team Updates:
  • Brief updates on the current status of the work of the “Stories,” “Digital Preservation in a Box” and Kickstarter Action teams.
• Other business

Participants

Guest Scribe: Vickie Allen

Attendees: Butch Lazorchak, Carol Minton Morris, Deborah Rossum, Amy Rudersdorf, Katherine Skinner, Helen Tibbo, Aaron Trehub, and Vickie Allen

Meeting Notes

Action Team Updates:

Carol: The Kickstarter NDSA Curated Page has been up and running for 2 months: Check it out at: http://www.kickstarter.com/pages/NDSA Curators include Butch, Carol, Deb, Vickie, and Kim Schroeder.

Some background from Kickstarter on overall numbers for 2011:

• 27,000 projects
• 11,000 + have been successful
• $100 million pledged
• 46% success rate (vs. 43% in 2010)
• Visitors up to 30 million

Funding categories are primarily the arts, film, and music, with design, games, and technology following. Anything library or archives seems to be getting a lot of attention. Can we do something to make more of these projects appear?

Deb & Vickie: Use similar technique when searching for projects to curate. Check once a week for library or archive projects using Kickstarter search. Comb through the newly launched projects for those that best fit mission of our group. Some weeks are better than others, but it does seem like more ‘good fits’ are appearing, and many of those get funded.

Butch: By drawing attention to these kinds of projects encourages others to do something themselves. An example of a project on our page is ‘Keep PastPages Alive,’ a project capturing and archiving the front pages of newspapers from around the world. The generic promotion of Kickstarter and our NDSA curated page through social media or talks can help get the word out. Recently talked to Records Managers and Law Librarians, many of which had not heard of Kickstarter. Our support for programs that align with our mission may help them get funded since we feature projects that are different from the usual Kickstarter fare.

Carol: It seems that the more curated pages are utilized for a given organization, the higher an organization can go in the curated pages ranking. Will check further with Kickstarter about this. Anyone who wishes to curate can contact Carol about getting signed up, or if you want to simply send an email to the group regarding a project, we will make sure it gets placed on the NDSA page. Curating also implies letting others know about projects. Kickstarter is an ongoing experiment for us, and so far it is going well.

Amy: On the project page, does it indicate that NDSA has ‘curated’ the project? Our endorsement may make a project seem more viable and gets our name out there.

Butch: The only way people know what we like is if they come to our page, though our name is not as familiar as some of the arts organizations. Maybe this idea of endorsement is something we can suggest to Kickstarter. There are other micro financing sites out there, so we may want to keep an eye open to something more appropriate further down the road.

Communications Plan Update:

Butch: What came out of the Coordinating Committee meeting of a month or so ago was the need for a Communications Plan to clearly define and divide roles within the NDSA groups, as well as create coherence in communications among groups. An Outreach WG Communications Plan DRAFT is in the works, but would like to put a call out to group members for contact information for any communications professionals willing to offer some expert review to see if we are moving in the right direction. This could be group members or their colleagues at work who have this expertise. Determined that we need to include crafted messages, something we have done in the past. Some possible messages:

• 1. Our contemporary culture is now entirely digital
• 2. There is irreplaceable business and cultural value stored in contemporary digital information
• 3. Digital information is inherently more fragile than traditional analogue materials due to issues of technical obsolescence, information management complexity and sustainability
• 4. Without proper stewardship, digital materials are subject to deterioration or failure, resulting in irrevocable cultural and business loss.
• 5. The benefits of preservation will ultimately outweigh the initial and ongoing costs of stewardship in that preservation enables future access to materials, which not only serves the public mission, but can result in cost savings for producers and increased revenue from users.

Once the Draft has been framed a bit more, will put it out to the group for review. In the meantime, group members are encouraged offer suggestions and ideas so that we can fine tune 3-5 core messages for the plan. One of the messages in our community has been the scary message: Do this or else. Should we flip this to the positive? Do we need both kinds of messages?

Aaron: It will cost money to do preservation or curation, but it also will cost money not to do it. Can speak to that if necessary. Beyond opportunity costs, there is the cost of losing information. We need to keep our messages really simple, and be fairly straightforward about the choices. Treat it like a form of insurance where there are a range of solutions available. It is useful to be stark about the issues and relate it to the work we already do, as there are real costs involved.

The group as a whole agreed that any messages should be kept simple. The following suggestions and observations from personal experience came out of a lively discussion:

• Both kinds of messaging are valuable and we need to avoid getting bogged down with trying to craft the perfect message. Focus should be on getting the message out as best we can so we can move forward and reach as many as possible.

• Messages need to be as simple as possible so they are understood by all and not just the professional accustomed to the subject and language of digital preservation.

• There needs to be some attention given to the ramifications of not doing digital preservation. Messages need to hit at many different levels.

• “The world is digital.” Repetition of a simple message will help people get it.

• Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

• Saving digital information can have lasting cultural and financial benefits.

Butch: Came in contact with a group seeking grant funding to do messaging. Should NDSA take on a role to do messaging, thereby become the ‘go to’ organization for statements and quotes on digital preservation? We can point to or say, here are 5 things.

Seems we want to cover universe in 3-5 messages and we need to have happy and scary. We will likely need to frame messages for different audiences. High level messages are statements of what we believe. As audiences are identified, we could craft to fit. Keep the discussion going. More to come…

Lastly, there is now a Word Press instance of Digital Preservation in a Box. Catholic University students have submitted work for inclusion. Once we get a public instance up, we will see more activity.