The digital preservation workforce, being an emerging profession with highly distributed practitioners who often work in relative isolation, may be vulnerable to experiencing workplace issues that impact mental health and wellbeing. There is a growing amount of anecdotal evidence to support this suggestion as well as responses to the 2021 NDSA Staffing Survey highlighting the high levels of stress experienced by practitioners due to issues such as unrealistic workloads, fragmented roles, and the ongoing advocacy burden of digital preservation.
One of the DPC's key mandates is developing a "competent and responsive workforce that is ready to address the challenges of digital preservation." In line with this goal, the organization launched a research initiative in 2023 to study mental health and wellbeing in the sector. A community survey conducted in March 2023 gathered data on how digital preservation work affects practitioners, identifying pressing issues and ways to address them.
Today's report represents the culmination of that research work. It examines workplace mental health and wellbeing issues comprehensively, including policy implementation, workload management, physical environments, and specific challenges. The study analyzes organizational support, working relationships, and stress factors through survey findings, identifying key themes and next steps. Alongside the main report, the DPC has released an Executive Summary as a standalone publication, and an anonymised dataset of quantitative responses to the survey. Both are available from the DPC's page on Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Digital Preservation Community.
"This research represents just the first step in establishing a new program of work at the Digital Preservation Coalition", says Project Lead Sharon McMeekin, Head of Workforce Development in a blog post reflecting on the research. "Now that we have a baseline understanding of mental health and wellbeing experiences in the digital preservation community, we can start working on addressing the issues and impacts highlighted by the report. We'll be shaping this important work together with the DPC's Workforce Development Sub-Committee over the coming months."
The report is now available online at: https://doi.org/10.7207/mhw2025