Elizabeth England, Digital Preservation Specialist and Leslie Johnston, Director of Digital Preservation both from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
As part of its Digital Preservation Strategy, the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has goals associated with the ongoing review of its program and with ensuring that agency staff have appropriate training. Discussions with our internal digital preservation advisory group confirmed the findings from our ISO 16363 self-audit in 2019 that NARA staff in a variety of roles are unfamiliar with the goals and activities that are part of digital preservation, as well as the technologies used, NARA-specific activities and programs, and the regulations and guidance that NARA produces and abides by to ensure that the permanent born-digital and digitized records of the federal government are managed, preserved, and made accessible.
In 2021, the NARA Digital Preservation unit began planning for digital preservation training. We collected relevant internal resources and reached out to peer institutions to benchmark digital preservation training initiatives. We were interested in learning how many institutions had training programs, if they were developed internally or externally, what community resources were reused or adapted, and the roles of staff who would receive training. The Digital Preservation unit and its internal advisory group then developed a set of proposed digital preservation training modules for NARA. The high-level goal is a modular approach with role-based selection for the modules to equip NARA staff with a level of digital preservation awareness appropriate to their role in the agency.
Training programs at NARA are based on a three-part rubric: Goals, Roles, and Tasks. The Goal is to address the training gaps identified in our self-assessment. We identified eleven staff Roles with varying types of digital preservation training needs. We also identified our curriculum goals as the training Tasks:
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Build general awareness of digital preservation practices
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Help staff to advise agencies on risks and risk mitigation strategies
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Help staff recognize a potential or current digital preservation risk and select an appropriate risk mitigation strategy for processing or preservation
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Recognize risk and sustainability factors for electronic record file formats
After mapping these training curriculum goals to the identified roles, we found there was significant overlap in needs. This allowed us to narrow down the number of proposed training offerings to four modules, offered through the NARA learning management system (LMS).
Module 1: Introduction to Digital Preservation
Summary: High-level introduction to the digital preservation profession, concepts, activities, and resources, and NARA Digital Preservation Strategy.
Target Group: Required for All NARA Staff
The Introduction to Digital Preservation training will be a basic briefing on digital preservation delivered during the required onboarding/annual training. This training will be mandatory for all NARA staff. The transition to electronic government as outlined in OMB Memo M-19-21 mandates that agencies transfer born-digital and digitized records instead of paper beginning in 2023. The agency will benefit from the training by ensuring all staff are familiar with the mandated transition and what permanent preservation of electronic records entails.
Module 2: Risk Assessment in Digital Preservation
Summary: Introduction to the identification of potential or current digital preservation risks and risk mitigation strategies for processing or preservation.
Target Group: Required for record appraisers and scheduling staff, corporate records managers, and all digitization, custodial unit, and reference staff.
The Risk Assessment in Digital Preservation training will be an introduction to digital preservation risks and mitigation. This one-time training will be mandatory for NARA staff identified as having direct involvement in the transfer, processing, public access, and permanent preservation of records.
Module 3: Digital Preservation at NARA
Summary: Overview of NARA practices and infrastructure for digital preservation.
Target Group: Required for record appraisers and scheduling staff, corporate records managers, and all digitization, custodial unit, and reference staff, and a subset of IT staff.
The Digital Preservation at NARA training will be an overview of the NARA landscape of practices, tools, and infrastructures delivered through the LMS. It will be a more technical, NARA-specific training than the Introduction to Digital Preservation and Risk Assessment in Digital Preservation ones, and will be mandatory for a scoped group of NARA staff who work with, or supervise the work of, processing and preserving electronic records.
Module 4: NARA Electronic Records Regulations and Guidance
Summary: Overview of the Federal Records Act, Presidential Records Act, and Legislative records management regulations, record digitization regulations for agencies, and guidance to agency staff.
Target Group: Required for record appraisers and scheduling staff, corporate records managers, and all digitization, custodial unit, and reference staff.
The NARA Electronic Records Regulations and Guidance training will be an overview of key regulations and guidance relevant to digital preservation. This training will be mandatory for NARA staff identified as having direct involvement in the transfer, processing, public access, and permanent preservation of records. The agency will benefit by ensuring these identified groups have context for regulations and guidance underpinning electronic records activities at NARA. This training will not be developed until late 2022/early 2023 due to the current process of regulatory updates.
So, what are the next steps? The Digital Preservation unit will begin developing the content for the first three training modules in cooperation with the other relevant NARA units. The intention is to phase the development and release of modules throughout FY 2022, as we learn from the process and receive feedback. While this work is happening, we are going to integrate the Digital Preservation Coalition Novice to Know-How program into our LMS for all staff, to supplement the forthcoming NARA-developed modules.