The best way to use this toolkit is to focus on the information at the level that works best for your group. You can build capabilities by working through the levels of the matrix in order, or pick and choose the topic you are most interested in. Some advice on how to identify your current stage is below.
If you are at the very beginning of your digital preservation work, start with the ‘What is Digital Preservation’, ‘Explaining the Lifecycle’ and ‘You are not Alone’ documents.
Then move on to level one topic one and work through the ten topic steps. This will give you a basic digital preservation workflow that you can adapt and add to as your group sees fit. ‘Digital Preservation – Just One thing’ is a downloadable document that will take you through the ten basic steps to implementing your process.
If you have started work and need advice on a particular topic, go straight to that topic and use the information from the level that is most relevant to help you build on your current capabilities and processes. It will be useful to read all three levels before deciding which level you would like to work on.
The toolkit also includes a series of case studies to show how community archive groups across the UK are operating. These will give you both advice and inspiration.
If you are confident working with digital collections, we have provided a list of resources which gives information on additional guides, processes and standards used across the archives and record keeping sector.