mac2025minneapolis

How do you go from a pantry stocked with aspirations for a digital preservation program in a well-prepared plate with the necessary skill and assessment ingredients to get started? In this session, practicing archivists and librarians will discuss their experiences in the digital preservation test kitchen of the 2024 Digital POWRR Peer Assessment Program. This program through Digital POWRR, or “Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources,” provides intensive training and establishes a community of practice around digital preservation concepts and assessment procedures. With the support of their cohort facilitator and peers, participants completed multiple self-assessments and an in-depth peer assessment, set goals, and ultimately created case studies to be broadly disseminated.

In discussion with their cohort facilitator, panelists will reflect on their assessments and case studies, emphasizing lessons learned, tools and practices they implemented at their different institutions, and areas that still need to be addressed or improved. Given the particularities, strengths, and constraints of each panelist’s institution, participants will share a range of takeaways that may be helpful for professionals attempting to provide ongoing care for their digital collections at a variety of institutions across the Midwest. Takeaways include advice, successes, and failures in the following areas: specific self-assessment models; advocacy and communication strategies with administrators and IT colleagues; creative stretching of resources for software and digital storage; and exploring digital preservation workflows and policies for born-digital and digitized collections.