Training in Digital Preservation - Alliance for Permanent Access

Training in Digital Preservation - Alliance forPermanent Access. William Kilbride, Chiara Cirinnà, Sharon McMeekiny. 21 February 2013. [PDF] 
This paper summarizes the current digital preservation needs based on the APARSEN project.
The need for training is great and the resources available are relatively meagre: so there is an
opportunity to collaborate in order to maximise impact.  In the training courses that have taken place there were four themes consistently expressed in feedback:

1. There is a great demand for training from staff already engaged in library and archive settings, especially for introductory material.
2. Audiences welcomed practical, case-study based training that matched their needs over theoretical knowledge. Tools and services beyond their level of knowledge or which lacked practical application were also less popular.
3. The audiences wanted practical interaction with preservation processes, including trying out the tools for themselves.
4. Audiences did not feel the need  to have a complete overview of preservation before they got started, and were less interested in the theoretical which they saw as a hindrance.

 However, training could be popular but still leave significant gaps so training should not just be based on the feedback.  The report gives many recommendations for training for Operational Staff,
Operational Managers, and Senior Managers regarding standards, object life-cycles, practical experience, legal and policy frameworks, ingest, provenance, metadata, financial planning, user communities, and succession planning.  They point to a very large unmet training need and a long list of topics which training providers can actually provide.

By developing training that meets proven needs we can provide a strong foundation to
an ever larger and ever more diverse community.
 

Digital Preservation Matters.