Some good news coming out of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program – the host institutions and projects for the upcoming year have now been announced! The NDSR, an initiative to develop new professionals in digital stewardship through funded, post-graduate residencies, is wrapping up the first successful year of the program, held in 10 different institutions in the Washington DC area (see previous blog posts about the program to-date). This competitive program not only helps the residents themselves by gaining needed real world experience, but also helps the host institutions by providing well-trained staff who can focus specifically on digital preservation efforts.
Preparations are well underway for a second season of residencies. As mentioned in Margo Padilla’s earlier post, the next round of National Digital Stewardship Residencies will be held in two cities starting this September – New York and Boston. Both programs have recently selected five host institutions for this coming year’s set of residency projects. The host organizations, along with their projects, are listed below:
For New York:
- American Museum of Natural History. Project – Preservation of Scientific Research and Collection Datasets at the American Museum of Natural History
- Carnegie Hall. Project – Carnegie Hall Digital Archives Project: Born Digital Asset Management and Preservation Policies
- Museum of Modern Art. Project – Adapting Preservation Standards to Meet the Information Needs of Time-Based Media Conservation
- New York Art Resources Consortium. Project – Web Archive Management at the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)
- New York University Libraries. Project – Access and Discovery of Born-Digital Archives
For Boston:
- Harvard University. Project – Format Migration Plans and Framework for Harvard Library
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Project – Making Music Last: Preservation Planning for ‘Music at MIT’ Digital Audio Content
- Northeastern University. Project – Channeling Streams of Archival records: Northeastern University
- Tufts University. Project – Institutional Knowledge of Research Data at Tufts University
- WGBH. Project – WGBH Digital Media Preservation Project
NDSA membership institutions are very involved in this program and helping to spearhead this next round of residencies. Andrea Goethals of the Harvard University Library and Program Director for the Boston residency, notes the great value and lessons learned from the first year of the program: “The first year we spent a lot of time learning from the NDSR program in D.C., talking to the program managers and residents about what worked well and what could be improved, and preparing for the first cohort in the Boston area. This year we’re excited to move into the implementation phase where we can put what we learned into practice and host our first cohort.”
Jefferson Bailey of the Metropolitan New York Library Council and Program Director for the New York residencies, says: “We have met with DC program staff, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, residents and the program evaluator. I think that collaboration has been great at identifying tweaks (sometimes large, sometimes small) to the overall program. In New York City, we had a large number of host proposals (21) for 5 residency projects, so that led us to develop some specific evaluation workflows for our Advisory/Review panel that could prove useful going forward. The quirks of local implementations will help test the model, as was the plan. But as Andrea said, the exciting changes and new features will take shape as the residents start their projects. One great thing about the NDSR is the role the residents take in enhancing the program — the feedback of the first cohort has been fantastic and incredibly useful and I’m sure the creative thinking of the New York and Boston groups of residents will be just as valuable.”
Anticipating this upcoming year of the program, Goethals says, “We have a great group of host institutions, each with a lot to offer to a resident, and each dedicated to making the program a success. All the projects present great learning opportunities for the residents and have the potential to contribute significantly to the digital preservation programs at the host institutions.”
“I concur with Andrea”, Bailey says. “In New York, we also have an awesome set of host institutions and projects. We’re especially excited about the diversity of projects, from scientific data management to web archiving and many more. We think this diversity is not only representative of the many domains in which digital stewardship plays a role, but also should make for an excellent knowledge-sharing opportunity among the resident’s themselves. Otherwise, the collaboration between DC, Boston, NYC, and the involvement of IMLS has really helped this program develop and grow stronger. Thanks to IMLS for their active support of the NDSR program!”
A reminder for all potential residents: applications for this program are still being accepted, the deadline is Friday, May 30th. All applicants should read through the project information and choose their top three preferences. Application information for New York can be found here, and application information for Boston can be found here.
A sneak peak ahead! There will be a panel discussion on the residency program at this year’s Digital Preservation 2014 meeting to be held July 22-24 in Washington, DC. More details will be available soon about the panel, as well as the meeting itself, so keep an eye out for future blog posts.