Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation 2017: An NDSA Report. Winston Atkins, et al. NDSA. October 2017. 
     This excellent report, based on a recent survey, looks at how organizations staffed and organized their digital preservation functions, and compares it with the survey done in 2012. This is a report worth studying.

Survey respondents were from the following organizations:

• Academic library or archives (46%)
• Government entities (11%)
• Museum (8%)

"Organizations establishing or scaling up digital preservation programs are faced with many staffing, scoping, and organizational decisions. Some of the questions that need to be answered include":

• How many staff members are needed and what kinds of skills, education, and experience should they have? 
• What types of positions should the institution create? 
• Should it hire new staff or retrain existing staff? 
• What functions should be included in the preservation program, provided by other parts of the organization, outsourced, or implemented through collaboration with other organizations? 
• What organizational and staffing models work well? 

From the survey, organizations reported: 

Staffing:

• an average of 13.6 FTE are working in digital preservation activities, but ideally the organizations would double that to 27.5 FTE 
• there is a need for more digital archivists,software developers, and cataloger/metadata analysts. 
• 68% of organizations retrained existing staff for at least some digital preservation functions, 
• 42% of organizations also hired experienced digital preservation specialists. 
• Staffing for an organization managing 1–50 TB 
• Current: 10.7 FTE 
• Ideal: 30.6 FTE

Content amount and Collection growth:

• 58.6% were preserving 1–50 TB of digital content, 
• 16.5% were preserving 51–100 TB, 
• 14.3% were preserving 101–500 TB,
• 8.3% were preserving more than 500 TB. 

• 73.2% expected less than 25% growth in the collection.  
• In 2012, 68% expected up to a 49% growth. 

Preservation activities and organization:

• Most organizations prefer conducting most digital preservation activities in-house
• Only 32% of the organizations had a dedicated digital preservation department

• 46% were not satisfied with how the digital preservation function was organized within their organization
• 25% believed it was organized properly.
• Satisfaction decreased from 2012, when 43% agreed or strongly agreed that their digital preservation functions were well-organized.
• One of the most striking findings was the increased percentage of respondents who reported that they were not satisfied with the way the digital preservation function was organized

•  52% of respondents participate in at least one consortium or cooperative network. Benefits include:
• networking (68%), 
• training (57%), 
• storage space (54%) 
• Consulting (35%), 
• access interface (33%) 
• communications/marketing (28%), 
• programming (25%), 
• federated search (16%)  

• Department that takes the lead for digital preservation: 
• Library / Archives 69.1%
• Information Technology (IT) 16.0%
• Preservation department 6.2%
• Other 8.6%

Other general comments of interest about digital preservation staffing issues include:

• “Continuing education is a must, so that staff can stay up-to-date on current trends and the latest news in technology.” 
• “It should be organized keeping in mind extra skills of an individual in addition to his/her specialist skill set. 
• “Staffing is critical to success.... All the pieces must be in place for a successful digital preservation effort.”

Importance of Qualifications for digital preservation staff in 2017, in order:

1. Knowledge of digital preservation standards/best practices
2. Communication
3. Passion and motivation for digital preservation
4. Collaboration
5. Analytical skills
6. Project planning/management

Digital Preservation Matters.

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation

Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation. An NDSA Report. Winston Atkins, et al. National Digital Stewardship Alliance. December 2013.
     In 2012 most of the 85 organizations surveyed had no dedicated digital preservation department so preservation tasks fell to a library, archive, or other department. About half of respondents thought that the digital preservation function in their organizations was well organized.  Most organizations expected the size of their holdings to increase substantially in the next year with 20% expecting a doubling of content, and the majority were preserving under 50 TB. Images and text files were the most common types of content being preserved.

Almost 70% of organizations wanted to outsource digitization, and 43% wanted to outsource secure storage management. The library, archive or other department that stewarded the collections was responsible for digital preservation 73% of the time and 42% responded that it was an IT department,

Organizations would like to have twice as many FTEs as they currently had working on digital preservation activities. Their ideal number of FTEs for several roles would be:

• Digital preservation manager: They had an average of .5, the ideal was 1
• Electronic records archivist: They had an average of 1, the ideal was 2
• Programer: They had an average of 1.5, the deal was 2.5
• Content analyst / maintainer: They had an average of .5, the ideal was 3

According to the survey, 75% organizations retrained existing staff, 35% hired experienced digital preservation specialists, and 21% other options. Given the chance to hire a new digital preservation manager, organizations were asked to rank the relative importance of skills, knowledge and education. A passion and motivation for digital preservation and knowledge of digital preservation standards, best practices and tools were considered the most sought after skills, followed by general communication and analytical skills. Respondents were less concerned with the specific degrees or certificates people held, with the least important being a degree in computer science.

The survey also emphasized the importance of buy‐in from the entire organization and budget sustainability. “There is a general lack of understanding of the budgetary demands on digital collections and preservation that equal, and usually exceed, traditional collection development. The “lights‐on” cost are rarely, if ever, discussed or budgeted, thus digital libraries and preservation programs typically are funded with leftovers.”

The results of the Digital Preservation Staffing survey indicate that organizations are making do with what they have and generally think that their digital preservation programs and staffing are working well, but they feel a distinct need for more people to help do the work.

Digital Preservation Matters.