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Advocating for Digital Preservation

3 July 2019 | 10:00 - 16:00 7-8 Kildare Street, Dublin | Seminar Room, National Library of Ireland

Introduction

Digital preservation relies on a wide range of skills and services, so practitioners and managers must coordinate a diverse set of skills, policies, tools and services from disparate sources within and outside their organisations. For some of these organisations, digital preservation is entirely new and the relevant resources will need to be assembled for the first time. Even established programs will face new challenges, and the range of tools and services required may constantly change. The ability to communicate the importance of digital preservation with other staff, departments, and organisations has, therefore, emerged as a key skill for our community. Plus, with the continuous changes in technology and staff, communication and advocacy must be an ongoing rather than a one-off activity to be successful.

In the early days of digital preservation, advocacy involved blunt statements about the social and economic impact of data loss and obsolescence. As solutions have emerged, our messages have had to become more subtle. Advocating for digital preservation has become increasingly about identifying stakeholders and helping them understand:

  • how their choices make digital collections more or less resilient; and
  • the benefits they will accrue from the active management of well-formed and accessible digital materials
  • the necessity of investment – whether time, money or other resources – and the extent to which it is required to achieve these benefits.

In an institutional setting this means understanding all the agents involved in a digital object lifecycle, helping them to prioritise and support those actions that make and keep collections robust, and discouraging those actions which put collections at risk. The DPC provides numerous tools to support internal advocacy including the new Executive Guide on Digital Preservation, the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit created as part of the SCAPE project, the 4C Curation Costs Exchange and a very substantial body of blog posts and reports.  There is no shortage of resources, but the need remains for digital preservation staff to be persistent and effective advocates for their work.

This one-day training workshop will help provide attendees with skills and ideas for identifying stakeholders and champions required to affect change, ways to showcase digital preservation as an indispensable service for their organisation and resources to help support their organisational advocacy activities.

The workshop will:

  • Identify common challenges when advocating for digital preservation
  • Align advocacy messages with organisational priorities
  • Demonstrate ways of identifying the value and relevance of digital preservation
  • Help attendees build their own tailor-made advocacy messages

 

Program

DPC Members and Supporters please log in to watch recordings of the following sessions:

Download slide deck [PDF]

 

  • 10.00 - Registration opens, tea and coffee

  • 10.30 - Welcome and Introductions 

  • 10.40 - Getting Started with Advocacy: Identifying the Challenges for Your Organisation

  • 11:10 - EXERCISE: Identifying Value and Opportunities and Aligning with Your Strategic Plan

  • 11:45 - How to Create an Elevator Pitch

  • 12:00 - EXERCISE: Drafting an Elevator Pitch

  • 12:30 - Lunch

  • 13:30 - What’s Worked: Stories of Success from DPC Members:

    • Ellen Murphy (Property Registration Authority Ireland)
    • Hugh Campbell (PRONI)
    • Joanna Finegan (National Library of Ireland)
    • Kasandra O'Connell (IFI Irish Film Archive) 

  • 14:30 - EXERCISE: Practising and Feedback on Elevator Pitches (over tea and coffee)

  • 15:30 - Next Steps: Building a Building Business Case and Useful Resources

  • 15:50 - Final Questions and Wrap-Up

  • 16.00 - Close

 

Can't make it in person?

Parts of this event will be broadcast live on the day and recordings shared on the DPC website.

Follow the event on Twitter using #dpcadvocacy

DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy

The DPC Community is guided by the values set out in our Strategic Plan and aims to be respectful, welcoming, inclusive and transparent. It encourages diversity in all its forms and is committed to being accessible to everyone who wishes to engage with the topic of digital preservation. The DPC asks all those who are part of this community and/or attending a DPC event be positive, accepting, and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others in alignment with our DPC Inclusion & Diversity Policy.

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