Digital preservation frameworks, strategies, and policies meetup

25 Aug 2022

Australasia Preserves / NSLA Digital Preservation Network

The collaborative meetup to explore Digital preservation frameworks, strategies, and policies  on 25 August 2022 organised by the Australasia Preserves community of practice and the National and State Libraries Australasia digital preservation network attracted over 100 participants. The online session provided an opportunity for the digital preservation (DP) community to come together for a wide-ranging discussion of current DP issues and their experiences.

The three speakers: Matthew Burgess, Lead Digital Archivist at the State Library of New South Wales; Jaye Weatherburn, Program Manager Digital Preservation at the University of Melbourne and Marty Gengenbach, Digital Preservation Policy and Outreach Specialist at the National Library of New Zealand gave an overview of the background to and current status of digital preservation policies and strategies in their organisations. 

The State Library of NSW has just finalised their Digital Preservation Framework. This has provided more detail on the internal practices under their policy which has been in place since 2015 and combines the preservation processes for physical and digital content. The framework provides a technical overview of the processes and monitoring in place for DP within the library and outlines the reporting structure under which it operates. The State Library used the DPC RAM to provide a foundation of the framework and the DPC Policy toolkit when developing their internal documents. The DPC RAM process has clarified what they hope to achieve in the next two years. They will investigate the DPC CAT to undertake a periodic audit of staff skills in digital preservation. 

The University of Melbourne has an emerging policy approach to digital preservation. Their Digital Preservation Strategy 2015 – 2025 has a university-wide scope and is endorsed by the Academic Board. The strategy covers four areas: culture, infrastructure, policy, and organisation-wide implementation. It is structured to allow evolution into a sustainable digital preservation ecosystem as the university changes. The university’s Digital Preservation Framework has developed operationally using a ground-up approach to policy development. It was developed while implementing the technical infrastructure for DP and includes the purpose, mandate, scope and principles of the policy across multiple areas of the organisation. It has been developed with staff input from key areas. This internal documentation has arisen from a realistic operational perspective and is designed to allow for future scaling. The current 2022 framework, version 4, includes the framework principles, operating procedures and current roles and responsibilities. 

At the National Library of New Zealand, Marty Gengenbach has been working to revive a long-dormant digital preservation policy manual. The library was well recognised for effective DP due to its project implementing the Rosetta system along with the New Zealand National Digital Heritage Archive in the early 2000s. However, there has been significant organisational change over the past decade and when the scope extended from a project into an operational program, it hadn’t included the necessary ongoing focus on policy and strategy. This meant that the existing documentation had gaps which produced an organisational risk. This lack of a properly documented connection between the library’s DP activities and policy meant it was difficult to advocate for necessary changes. It also meant that operational procedures reflected a structure that no longer existed. Marty started with the library in April 2022 and has implemented a process of relationship building across the organisation. His long-term goal is the development of a digital preservation policy aligned with organisational strategies that will provide the most impactful policy support. As stakeholders change, the document should allow policy changes to be matched to desired organisational outcomes and easily integrated into new workstreams.

Following the three presentations, participants divided into virtual breakout groups and responded to the following pre-prepared questions:

1. Introductions – who are you, where are you from? 
2. What’s your status with policy work for digital preservation – have one? Thinking about it? 
3. What are your pain points with policy work? 
4. Scenario building: tell us how your policy progressed your work? Or how did absence of policy stall your work? 
5. What is a successful policy implementation you’ve seen and why was it successful? 
6. How do you communicate policy to better ensure it is a useful, living thing?

When the groups came back together there was a lot of discussion around operational processes and how DP planning can be integrated into an organisation’s ongoing development. Some groups had noted the problems of procuring DP systems and how to integrate this with overall organisational planning included the need to engage with IT departments who may have different objectives. 

There was a recognition that many organisations took an operational approach to DP, making it difficult to bring up in wider discussions around policy and strategic development. Some participants discussed difficulties arising from the move from analogue to digital content. Most participants indicated that their organisations were only at the early stages of DP, but some felt it was currently a ‘buzz word’ in some quarters which made it easier to discuss with management. 

There were many pain points identified around hardware and infrastructure and in particular storage needs. Migration was often a huge task and there was a need for champions in this area. Often if DP is not seen as central to an organisation, which means that staff can be redirected to other tasks. There was an identified need for collaborative support from the wider community of practice, so that staff are not re-inventing the wheel and can refer to work happening in other organisations. It could be useful to see how others have used the DPC RAM. There is a need for more communication including shared terminologies and understandings. It is good to see policy as an ongoing process. There is a need for a broader community understanding of the value of digital collections as there is still too much focus on physical material. It needs to be recognised that DP is more than just storage and digitisation. But policy development can be achieved in small chunks which makes it much more humanly achievable.

Watch the presentations from this meetup on the Australasia Preserves YouTube channel. 

Written by Robin Wright

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