The National Digital Stewardship Alliance Standards (NDSA) and Practices Working Group have released “Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation: An NDSA Report,” a survey of 85 institutions with a mandate to preserve digital content. The questions focused on staffing and organization, and some of the key findings include:
- There is no dedicated digital preservation department in most organizations surveyed.
- Images and text files are the most common types of content being preserved.
- Most organizations are retraining existing staff to manage digital preservation functions rather than hiring new staff.
- For new hires, respondents believe that passion for digital preservation and a knowledge of digital preservation standards, best practices, and tools are the most important characteristics of a good digital preservation manager, not a particular educational background or past work experience.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Jolie Braun, Francesca Livermore, Jane Nichols, Chella Vaidyanathan, and Krista White (Editors-at-large for the week), Zach Coble (Editor for the week), and Caro Pinto and Roxanne Shirazi (dh+lib Review Editors).