What’s Wrong with Digital Stewardship: Evaluating the Organization of Digital Preservation Programs from Practitioners’ Perspectives

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance surveyed practitioners in 2012 and again in 2017 to gauge, among other things, how satisfied they were with their organizations’ digital preservation function. This study seeks to understand what causes the high and rising levels of dissatisfaction that practitioners reported. We interviewed 21 digital stewards and asked them to describe the organizational context in which they work; to reflect on what aspects of their organizations’ approach to digital preservation are working well and which are not; and to evaluate necessary areas of improvement. We identified experiences that were common among participants using a qualitative research methodology based on phenomenology. These conversations revealed that practitioners largely consider digital stewardship values and goals to be misunderstood at an organizational level, and demonstrated that the absence of a long-term vision for digital stewardship disempowers practitioners

What Makes A Digital Steward: Paper - iPRES 2016 - Swiss National Library, Bern

Digital stewardship is the active and long-term management of digital objects towards their preservation for and unencumbered access by future generations. Although the field is rapidly maturing, it still lacks a comprehensive competency profile for practitioners. This is due in part to the relative youth of the field, and to the fact that being an effective steward of digital materials requires highly specialized training that is best acquired through hands-on work. Given the key role that competency profiles play in the design of curricula and job postings, the lack of one hinders the training and education of professionals for these positions. This paper provides a profile of the skills, responsibilities, and knowledge areas that define competency in digital stewardship, based on a close study of the projects undertaken in the National Digital Stewardship Residency program (NDSR). The authors use a triangulated research methodology in order to define the scope of the profile, qualitatively analyze the competencies articulated among NDSR project descriptions, and quantitatively evaluate those competencies’ importance to professional success. The profile that results from this research has implications for current and future digital stewards: training designed with this profile as its basis will focus on the skills most needed to be an effective digital steward, and therefore can guide both graduate and professional development curricula alike

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction - iPRES 2019 Amsterdam

Approaches to digital stewardship vary from institution to institution. Given the substantial differences among organizational models and program maturity, what indicates successful organization of the long term work of digital preservation to practitioners? Panelists will introduce and contextualize their ongoing research into the shared characteristics of successful digital preservation programs throughout the field. They will identify the emergent themes articulated by research subjects thus far and engage attendees to discuss challenges and opportunities of digital preservation at their respective institutions