From Carol Kussmann, University of Minnesota Libraries

After over a year of hard work, the NDSA (National Digital Stewardship Alliance) Levels of Digital Preservation Working group announces the Levels of Digital Preservation 2.0!

In 2018 the NDSA sent out a call to the larger digital preservation community asking for interest in updating the Levels of Preservation.  Response was high – 125 individuals responded! NDSA then convened the Levels of Preservation Working group, which divided up into subgroups to tackle the many areas the community wanted to see addressed in a Levels Reboot. Individuals worked with their chosen subgroups.   

The Implementation Subgroup, led by Corey Davis and Eleni Castro, surveyed the community to see how the Levels had been used in the past and what people liked and didn’t like.  This information was one of the sources used to assist with the revision of the Levels Matrix. The survey results are available on the NDSA OSF site.  

The Revisions Subgroup, led by Karen Cariani and Dan Noonan, met almost weekly for months to address the community’s needs and concerns about updating the Levels Matrix.  Their dedicated work produced the updated Levels Matrix and Implementation Guide.

The Assessment Subgroup, led by Carol Kussmann and Amy Rudersdorf, worked to further explore how the Levels had been used as an assessment.  A report of findings was published on the NDSA OSF site.  In addition, an Assessment Tool that is based on the updated Levels Matrix was created to be used as part of an assessment.  

The Curatorial Subgroup, led by Bradley Daigle and Angela Beking have a public draft available of both the visual and written components. The Curatorial work is meant to form the basis of a series of discussion and decision points around how collections materials can be mapped to the Levels and other elements within an organizations’ preservation strategy.   

The next steps are to create a subgroup to address the development of strategy and additional materials to support the Levels of Digital Preservation v2.0 educational and advocacy efforts. Please contact Bradley Daigle at ndsa.digipres [at] gmail [dot] com if you are interested in working on this or being added to the Levels of Preservation Google Group.