A key strength of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance is to bring together a diverse group of organizations to identify, communicate and advocate for common needs and practices of the digital stewardship community. Membership is designed to allow government agencies, academic institutions and other types of corporate or nonprofit organizations to work collaboratively on issues that not only support an institution’s work but also have a positive impact and connection to the digital stewardship community at-large.
One of the most invaluable benefits of the NDSA is to be able to share the kinds of work people do for their organizations and how they came to do it. By sharing what they’ve learned, members are shaping and advancing digital preservation practices and action. None of this work could be done without each member organization contributing individuals and their efforts to working groups, responding to surveys, reviewing reports and sharing their knowledge and expertise.
Our members are truly the NDSA’s most valuable asset. Which is why the Library of Congress’ NDIIPP program, as Secretariat, has been working on a number of areas to improve and make transparent both ongoing and potential activities and to enhance member engagement activities and resources.
A recent activity has been to update the NDSA web presence. We’ve refreshed and reorganized it to improve content discovery and to focus on member information and resources to membership.
Here are some of the new and improved webpages:
- Looking for a calendar of upcoming working group calls or conference presentations? Check the NDSA Calendar.
- If you’re a member and looking for a quick list of member resources (e.g. link to the wiki, current working group projects), bookmark the Member Resources page and the New Member Orientation and Resources page. There are a number of links to membership, participation and communication resources.
- If you’re NOT a member but interested in joining or learning more about the NDSA, visit the Get Involved page. You can read about the excellent benefits to membership as well as well as the responsibilities of NDSA membership.
- Want to find out who’s an NDSA member? The NDSA Member List (which utilizes Viewshare technology) will be updated monthly with new member organizations. (Editor’s note: the Viewshare program was retired in 2018.)
- If one of your co-workers, professional colleagues or friends ask you, “What is this NDSA?” tell them about it, then follow-up by sending them the About page.
- If the information you’re curious about isn’t listed above check out the FAQ page (or send an email with your questions to ndsa [at] loc.gov).
We’ve also created a new resource, the NDSA Experts Guide, as a media outreach tool to increase awareness of NDSA and its resources. This new guide highlights representatives of NDSA member organizations who are available to speak to the news media about a variety of topics and who are recognized for their contributions throughout the digital preservation community. They’ve kindly offered to be a contact for questions about the NDSA or for their area of expertise or interest.
Coming up in the next few months, we’ll be working on developing and delivering member engagement webinars and organizing new member showcases during working group calls. We’re also starting a new member interview series on the blog to introduce the newest members to the community.
And, of course, we hope to see many of our NDSA members at the annual Digital Preservation 2014 meeting and CURATECamp, July 22-24. The program and registration will be announced soon.