NDSA:Outreach Meeting Minutes 11-14-11

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Monday November 14, 2011, 3:00 p.m. EDT

Agenda

• Announcements
• Action Team Updates
• National Campaign
• Other Business

Participants

Guest Scribe: Jaime Stoltenberg

Jane Zhang, Carol Minton Morris, Jaime Stoltenberg, Elizabeth Joffrion, Shane Beers, Sue Manus, Rick Lippert, Deborah Rossum, Linda Reib, Sarah Rhodes, Pam Greenberg, Amanda French, Peter Krough, Amy Rudersdorff, Aaron Trehub, Helen Tibbo, Bob Downs

Meeting Notes

Action Team Updates: Carol Minton Morris opened the discussion by introducing both the “Storytellers” and the “Digital Preservation in a Box” action teams.

Storytellers

Deb Rossum provided a detailed update on the “Storytellers” group. A meeting was held late last week with Deb, Carol, and Peter Krough who volunteered to help provide working tips on video production depicting data loss/retrieval. Peter and Carol worked on an outline document describing production, direction, etc. Carol indicated personal stories (rather than institutional ones) are a good start; more dramatic.

Amanda French, who posted the call for stories as part of the “Storytellers” group (and who volunteered to host the video once produced) announced that there are 11 stories thus far that have been contributed. She mentioned there was (deliberately) no closing date on the call for stories, but we should decide how much longer we want to try to collect them before concentrating on the video production.

The Storytellers group will host their next meeting/teleconference on Thursday, November 17th 2011 at 3:00pm Eastern.

Digital Preservation in a Box

Butch Lazorchak provided an update on the activities of the Digital Preservation in a Box group. Materials were prepared initially for the Summer 2011 meeting at the Library of Congress and the group has been a bit quiet since then.

There have been regular conference calls on this subject with working group members, but on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 (at 11:00am) there will be a call for all those interested in continuing this work, and the focus will be to “getting to business”. (I.e. laying out specific tasks for people to work on and move forward.)

Rick Lippert has offered to host an external facing wiki, where some information from the current NDSA outreach wiki will be eventually transferred. Rick indicated the wiki is ready to accept the feed from the current outreach wiki. A short video was created with three objectives (1) the wiki (2) forum for open discussion, and (3) a model to this further to add actual collections. This video was shared with the “Box” working group members and Butch will share with the entire NSDA Outreach group.

People interested in helping with the “Box” working group should contact Butch for information regarding the next conference call.

Jane Zhang provided an update on how her students at Catholic University will use the “Digital Preservation in a Box” tools/resources in an upcoming Digital Curation class she is teaching. They will complete an outreach activity as part of the course, and will evaluate and contronute to the “box” concept. In late April (in conjunction with Digital Preservation Week/ALA) her students will make their final presentations.

Revisiting the “National Campaign”

Carol Minton Morris began the discussion of the next phase of the “national public awareness campaign” for digital preservation. She provided background regarding a December 2010 meeting/conversation with the Ad Council, and indicated after that the group came to the conclusion that we had to be more organized to work with them. She posed several questions to the people on the call: How can we resurrect this? Is there a new way to approach it? Can we leverage some of the work we have already done?

When this high level concept was initially discussed (a year ago) we never got to the point where we could identify the discrete pieces that each of us could take on then bring together.

Amy Rudersdorf asked for clarification on exactly what was discussed in the past. Carol Minton Morris provided a re-cap of the previous concept which was wide-ranging in scope. She mentioned we should narrow our “broad appeal” focus.

Amy R.: One example on how to approach this is identifying audiences, but developing a single message that encompasses all. One discrete task we can do is focus on (for example) teens or older people (seniors).

Helen Tibbo mentioned we could broaden it from specific age groups to focus more on the “topics” like personal digital archiving of pictures of families, babies, pets, meaningful events in people’s lives, etc.

Carol Minton Morris suggests that the fragility of personal digital vs. institutional digital is better suited for a national campaign.

Sarah Rhodes suggests that instead of first dividing into separate working groups we identify the audiences first as a larger group, then develop messages for them. Butch asks for clarification on what tasks we could undertake as a first step?

Peter Krough mentions we could look for ideas from the stories being submitted (in the “Storytellers” group.) He says it might work well to use these videos as a way to get out individual messages that sit under a larger umbrella concept of a ‘national campaign’.

We need to come up with something ‘targeted and achievable’ for people. This would be the best way to demonstrate whether or not something would gain traction. He suggests reaching out to communities with ad agencies or firms that might do some work for free. If it helps to potentially build their portfolio, some agencies might help with the creative/design/production/layout of some of our ideas.

Bob Downs asks if it would help to have more than one story, or to focus on one that is the “best”? Peter: the group needs to plan the general objective of the campaign, then identify some target audiences, and have an ad agency put these together in creative space. We could use the “stories” as examples.

Carol Minton Morris indicated they are working on a document that shows an outline of what they want to accomplish (with Peter).

Butch asks for clarification on a call to action. What are our new objectives? What can we ask people to do?

Peter suggests defining the importance and/or fragility – then describe the best ways to achieve preservation for those examples. The call to action is finding a way to inform the public on the best/easiest way for them to preserve their information, whether photos, videos, family genealogy, etc.

Butch adds the NDIIPP audience is craving information on this subject, and that personal examples can resonate up to the institutional level.

Carol Minton Morris reminds the group that we need to narrow the focus, and that the fragility of personal digital data remains the common theme.

Amy Rudersdorf adds that she teaches a preservation class at San Jose State University where her students (as part of this course) have to write about an experience where they have lost digital data or information in some way. Helen Tibbo comments that her students do something similar. She suggests there could/should be a Girl/Boy Scout badge for digital preservation. Butch: the goal is to have this so engrained in society so things like that are highly probable.

Coming back to the two audiences Amy suggested earlier (teens or seniors) Butch is interested in where we go from here focusing on that.

Peter suggests the best way for us to proceed is to identify succinct/discrete recommendations on how people can preserve their digital data. This must be achievable and simple. Pam Greenberg suggest utilizing the current NDSA partners to initially distribute this information as first step of publicizing it (rather than an expensive Ad Council focus.)

Butch adds that much of what makes up the “Digital Preservation in a Box” are these sorts of resources, but we need to simplify it to (for example) the 10 key things we want the public to know about digital preservation. In response, Amy suggests this should really be only about 3 key things, and outreach beyond our professional realm(s) might be challenging for some NDSA members. Butch mentions the “trickle up” theory again, of how reaching the public will in turn resonate with our institutions over time.

Bob Downs offers the fact that perhaps some video production that goes viral on YouTube could be very successful. Carol adds that we could let the “creative” work with these videos happen at the ad agencies.

What’s Next?

In closing there were final remarks on where we go next. Sarah suggests that trying to identify this “process” is difficult to do in one call with a large group. We could use the current wiki to post ‘target audience’ examples, try to define the characteristics of these groups, then discuss what we think would resonate with each.

Butch shared the old “Audience Action Team: wiki page with the group via email as a frame of reference to the work done a year ago. The group will add to the audience page with ideas over the next few weeks.