Assessing Your Digital Preservation Readiness

It can seem overwhelming to try and move an organization towards proactively addressing the risk technology obsolescence poses to critical digital information.There are, however, several tools available that can be used to assess readiness and build awareness and engagement with stakeholders. I take a look at three of these below.

‘Levels of Digital Preservation’: National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA)
A tiered set of recommendations for how organizations should begin to build or enhance their digital preservation activities, comprising of an easy-to-use matrix of functional areas and technical activities, which help organizations prioritize resources. Discover how our customers have assessed Preservica’s active digital preservation solution using the NDSA ‘Levels of Preservation’ set of recommendations.

Capability Maturity Model (DPCMM)
Another option is the Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model (DPCMM) which I co-developed with Charles Dollar. The DPCMM assessment has been used very successfully by a wide range of institutions, including members of the US Council of State Archivists in 2012 and 2015 to benchmark the record management capabilities of state and territory archives. The output of the assessment is a scorecard that I find can be a great conversation starter. If you’re curious, you can find how Preservica’s active digital preservation solution scored on the DPCMM self-assessment here

IMLS & POWRR Report
While digital preservation requires organizational commitment, it can only be achieved at scale with robust workflows and technologies. You can learn how the POWRR group assessed different tools suitable for small and mid-sized organizations in IMLS & POWRR Report.

In truth, ingesting, characterizing, storing and migrating digital assets over time are all challenges within an active digital preservation strategy; a strategy which Preservica’s mission is to support.

I’ll be sharing additional tips, tricks and tools in future blogs.

Lori