The following is a guest post by George Coulbourne, Executive Program Officer at the Library of Congress’s Office of Strategic Initiatives.
On February 21, the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) program met with leaders from the Library, Archives, and Academic community to discuss how DPOE will expand on its success in growing a national digital preservation training network.
In addition to Library of Congress staff, the meeting was attended by senior leadership from the Council of State Archivists, the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Colorado, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Maryland.
As a direct result of this meeting, DPOE has set its sights on building a grassroots effort to spread digital preservation training to communities throughout the nation. This model will guide the development of regional digital preservation training centers for concentrated outreach and education activities.
Just a little over two years old, DPOE has already made strong strides to meet the national digital preservation education need. In 2011 DPOE launched a digital preservation training calendar, developed digital preservation education modules and delivered the first DPOE Train-the-Trainer workshop resulting in the 24 trainers that make up the DPOE National Trainer Network. DPOE is excited to report that these new trainers have scheduled more than 25 digital preservation training events across the United States.
DPOE will build on these recent successes as it reaches out across the country to build its grassroots digital preservation education network. Based on input from the DPOE Steering Committee, DPOE is currently scanning the landscape and building a strategy for continued outreach to various communities of need. DPOE is leveraging its current communities of digital preservation trainers, advocates, and learners in active listserv discussions that have addressed topics such as storage solutions for small institutions and checksum verification practices.
The DPOE team believes strongly in bringing communities of practice together so that those taking on digital preservation activities can unite and learn from each other in a safe and positive space. DPOE’s role is to reach out to those in need of digital preservation education and support, connect them with training opportunities in their regions, and facilitate the practice of ongoing community learning and growth.
For more information on DPOE activities, please visit the website.
To join the DPOE listserv, send an email to [email protected] with the text, “Subscribe to DPOE listserv” in the subject line.
March 15, 2012: Fixed typographical errors.
Comments
Oh, dear. Not once, but twice: “set its sites” …