by Sara Ring
Quick Summary
The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) released Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report. This is a follow-up to a 2012 survey on the same topic. The report investigates how 133 organizations staff and organize their digital preservation functions, and points out any changes from the 2012 survey. If your organization is in the beginning stages of establishing a digital preservation program, or if you're looking to ramp up and improve your existing program, this report may help!
The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) released Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report. This is a follow-up to a 2012 survey on the same topic. The report investigates how 133 organizations staff and organize their digital preservation functions, and points out any changes from the 2012 survey. If your organization is in the beginning stages of establishing a digital preservation program, or if you're looking to ramp up and improve your existing program, this report may help! Here are a few outcomes pulled from the executive summary of the report:
- Oganizations reported an average of 13.6 FTE working in digital preservation activities, and indicated they would double that to 27.5 FTE in ideal circumstances.
- Respondents expressed a need for more digital archivists, software developers, and cataloger/metadata analysts.
- Most respondents’ organizations (68%) retrained existing staff for at least some digital preservation functions, while 42% hired experienced digital preservation specialists
- The findings on collection holdings show that the volume of holdings was larger than in the previous survey, but the expected rate of future growth had moderated.
- As in the 2012 survey, images and text documents continue to be the majority of digital files being preserved.
- Most respondents appear to prefer conducting most digital preservation activities in-house.
- 46% of respondents were not satisfied with how the digital preservation function was organized within their organization, while 25% believed it was organized properly. This is a significant decrease in satisfaction from 2012, when 43% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their digital preservation functions were well-organized.
