Katherine Skinner
Martin Halbert
Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program
Christina Drummond
National Digital Stewardship Alliance
Katherine Skinner
Martin Halbert
Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program
Christina Drummond
National Digital Stewardship Alliance
The Identifying Continuing Opportunities for National Collaboration (ICONC) project analyzed the design and management of collaborative networks to better understand the criteria that lead to their successes and failures. Using a broad-based evaluation of collaborative models as context, the project reviewed and documented the landscape of digital preservation and digital stewardship and explored a range of opportunities for strengthening digital preservation practices and collaboration across all 50 states and within the National Digital Stewardship Alliance environment. The project brought a strong focus on cross-sector opportunities and collaborations (academic, government, public, memory, commercial, etc.)
The ICONC project resulted in a pilot set of visualization tools that can be used to analyze data representing U.S.-based collaborative digital stewardship, curation and preservation work. The ICONC project team compiled this cross-sector data using stakeholder interviews, professional association surveys, and grant-award and publication data mining.
By leveraging this data and mapping both historical and current collaborative activities across a variety of sectors, leaders can gain insights into questions such as:
Click on a section below to explore.
The Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation conference developed out of a series of conversations between Educopia, the U.S. Library of Congress, the University of North Texas, Auburn University, the MetaArchive Cooperative, and the National Library of Estonia about the need for a forum where preservation programs from different national contexts can share information with each other for the purpose of building strategic international collaborations to support the preservation of our collective digital memory.
While there are many annual events that support and encourage information exchange across national boundaries, no event has yet attempted to set a strategic direction across the range of topics represented here: Organizational Alignment, Technical Alignment, Legal Alignment, Standards Alignment, Economic Alignment, and Education Alignment. This conference provided a participatory forum for information exchange and focused work on these topics.
The Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation conference developed out of a series of conversations between Educopia, the U.S. Library of Congress, the University of North Texas, Auburn University, the MetaArchive Cooperative, and the National Library of Estonia about the need for a forum where preservation programs from different national contexts can share information with each other for the purpose of building strategic international collaborations to support the preservation of our collective digital memory.
While there are many annual events that support and encourage information exchange across national boundaries, no event has yet attempted to set a strategic direction across the range of topics represented here: Organizational Alignment, Technical Alignment, Legal Alignment, Standards Alignment, Economic Alignment, and Education Alignment. This conference provided a participatory forum for information exchange and focused work on these topics.
On May 23-25, more than 125 delegates from more than 20 countries gathered in Tallinn, Estonia, for the “Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation” conference. At the National Library of Estonia, this group explored how to create and sustain international collaborations to support the preservation of our digital cultural memory.
This publication contains a collection of peer-reviewed essays that were developed by conference panels and attendees in the months following ANADP. Rather than simply chronicling the event, the volume intends to broaden and deepen its impact by reflecting on the ANADP presentations and conversations and establishing a set of starting points for building a greater alignment across digital preservation initiatives. Above all, it highlights the need for strategic international collaborations to support the preservation of our collective cultural memory.
Educopia is proud to receive the 2013 Preservation Publication Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for the volume Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation. According to the nominator, the publication “provides a comprehensive assessment of the current state of practice that has breadth and depth . . . as well as providing recommendations for moving forward toward an international community of practice.”
The Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation (ANADP) II Action Assembly will align digital preservation efforts internationally between communities, including national libraries, academic libraries, public libraries, research centers, archives, corporations, and funding agencies.
ANADP II will be a highly participatory event in which stakeholders will engage in facilitated discussions and action sessions to produce a set of concrete outcomes for the extended digital preservation community in three areas: Community Alignment, Resource Alignment, and Capacity Alignment. These specific action outcomes will include an international tools/services registry, a framework for applying OAIS to Distributed Digital Preservation methodologies, a catalogue of education and training opportunities, and quantitative data gathering around digital preservation costs.
published 20 January 2014
The ICONC project created an open data-set revealing the characteristics of U.S.-based digital preservation collaborations from 1994‐2014. Data was populated from publications, websites, grant awards, and surveys of NASCIO and NAGARA members.
Ten data attributes were captured for each of the 211 documented collaborative activities; six areas of data attributes were recorded for the 1,274 participating American organizations (out of the 1,856 participating organizations.) The relationships between organizations and activities were recorded to enable relational analyses. The resulting raw data file leveraged embedded pivot tables, while also providing the foundation for interactive data visualizations on the Tableau and CartoDB platforms.
Links to the live set of piloted Tableau dashboards are provided below as an initial set of filters for community review. The dashboards may also be download and opened with Tableau Reader.
In 2012, Educopia was approached by the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) to identify and document collaborative digital preservation activities in the U.S., across relevant memory sectors (e.g., academic, government, archival, museum, nonprofit, and commercial). Using these “state profiles”, Educopia was also asked to help NDIIPP identify future opportunities for collaborative activities. Educopia proposed and was funded by a Cooperative Agreement to conduct this research as part of the Identifying Continuing Opportunities for National Collaboration (ICONC) project (September 2012-December 2013).
As Educopia scoped this research, the project team determined that the data it would gather might have multiple use cases within the memory community and beyond. A well-constructed relational dataset resulted, comprised of information about collaborative digital preservation activities and the domestic organizational collaborators behind such activities. Activity data captured included important information such as start and end dates, descriptions, NDIIPP funding status, URLs, and founding or host institutions. Data about collaborating organizations included their general location, sector, and organizational focus. Most importantly, the relationship between activities and organizations was preserved, so that one could view both the activities a specific organization is involved in and the organizations involved in a given activity.
Rather than producing a stand-alone report, the ICONC team has produced three deliverables. First, an open (yet beta) relational dataset that contains 211 collaborative digital preservation activities and 1856 related collaborating organizations to support a wide range of research questions. Second, a set of initial interactive data-driven dashboards serve to allow NDIIPP and other groups to begin viewing custom defined subsets of the data underlying this report in maps, bubble charts, and other graphical means. Third, this narrative overview both highlights research findings and activities underway in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and recommends future directions based on the initial analyses of the 3,298 records in this dataset.
Due to time and budget constraints, this dataset is only a pilot, and should be thought of as a beta version. While the aim was to be exhaustive in capturing activities and collaborators, due to the sheer volume of information and the manual data mining, items may not yet be reflected in this dataset. There are also two specific areas involving taxonomy classifications where the pilot dataset can be refined. To facilitate searching for collaborators hailing from a particular industry sector (e.g. video production or news media), preliminary organizational coding occurred. However, taxonomy development requires more time and community feedback than what was available within the pilot period. The initial basic taxonomy classifying the activities within the dataset1 should also be revisited and refined by the U.S. Digital Preservation Collaborations 1994-2014 2 broader community, adding additional information about the targeted users or beneficiaries of specific activities when known.
published 28 January 2015
Within this .zip file are four files pertaining to the ICONC project dataset. An .xls excel workbook holds 13 pivot table report views on individual worksheets, as well the ICONC project’s raw data worksheet.
Data report views include: Timeline, Project Lifespans, All State Activity Profiles, State Profile Detail, Activity_Histogram by Type, Activity Listing, Organization Histogram by State, Organization listing, Program Creation by State, Organization Engagement by Activity Type, and Organization Count by Activity. The data codebook (.pdf) is included that guided the collection and coding of project data by the research team. The Creative Commons CC-BY4.0 license is also included in legal and human readable formats (.pdf).
