title: In the Thicket of It with the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group: Cultivating Grass Roots Approaches to Real-World Digital Preservation Issues
creators: Winston Atkins Erin Engle Andrea Goethals Karl Jackson Carol Kussmann Kate Murray Michelle Paolillo Mariella Soprano
abstract: The engaged membership of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s Standards and Practices (S&P) Working Group are active digital preservation practitioners. One of five National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) working groups, S&P projects and discussions originate from real-world issues that members face in their daily work. Since 2010, the S&P has sought to identify community knowledge gaps for the “on-the-ground practitioners” across a broad spectrum of content areas and to work collaboratively to bridge those gaps. Some of the topics recently addressed by the S&P include preservation of digital artworks, issues related to optical media, stumbling blocks for preserving video collections and analyzing risks and benefits of the PDF/A3 format for archival institutions among many others. Using the visual imagery of a fruit tree, this poster explores the grass roots nature of S&P projects and products, from the foundational member institutions comprising the soil and roots, through the trunk and branches of the tree addressing different topics, and finally reaching to the individual leaves and fruit representing project outcomes and deliverables, as well as work still to do. The goal of the poster is to highlight the self-organizing nature of the S&P’s varied projects as well as to increase community awareness of the collaboratively developed resources and products.
keywords: best practices community collaboration education standards survey