New Report: "States of Sustainability: The NDIIPP Preserving State Government Information Initiative"

Direct to Full Text Report: States of Sustainability: A Review of State Projects funded by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
201 pages; PDF

Also Available at: http://www.ils.unc.edu/callee/ndiipp-states-report.pdf
Direct to Summary (via LC’s The Signal Blog)
By Butch Lazorchak

When I first started at the Library of Congress in 2004 I was hired to support the imminent Preserving State Government Information initiative. Over these nearly eight years I have had the opportunity to work with some of the most innovative and committed people in the country on addressing the challenge of keeping state and local government data available and accessible.
My work at Library has been deeply aligned with these efforts from day one (very satisfyingly, I might add), which is why I announce with great pleasure the release of States of Sustainability: A Review of State Projects funded by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) (PDF), a report written by Christopher A. Lee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that provides a succinct overview of the work we’ve accomplished.

Read the Complete Summary
See Also: UNC professor authors State Government Digital Preservation Report for the Library of Congress (via SILS at UNC)

“The NDIIPP states program was designed to involve – to the extent possible – both archivists and librarians from each of the participating states,” Lee states in the document. “This has reinforced digital preservation as an endeavor that is shared across both state records and state publications. However, many projects’ accomplishments were only possible because of extensive interaction with professionals who are neither librarians nor archivists.” Further, the most successful programs have been able to respond to numerous disruptions in their states, including significant funding and personnel changes. On the technical side, Lee reports that successful projects have focused on specific types of content and integrating the preserved information into environments specifically designed to support long-term preservation, scalability and interoperability.
Lee recommends that state personnel responsible for digital preservation should continue to cast their collaboration nets widely, as partnerships with chief information officers, software vendors, advocacy groups and domain experts from data-intensive units of agencies can be just as important as those with librarians and archivists. Determining what role the various stakeholders will play in collaborating on digital preservation is essential to formulating a plan of action. Collaboration and sharing of information across state lines will also be vital to the continued success of NDIIPP projects.
I suggest three main lessons for potential funders of future state digital preservation projects: multi-year projects are a major benefit in a state government context; alliances can bring legitimacy; and providing for multiple forms of participation is essential,” Lee summarizes.
SILS graduate students, Martin Gengenbach and Sarah Houlditch-Fair, played an integral part in the report’s development. They compiled and synthesized information about the NDIIPP state projects and related activities in other states.

Direct to Full Text Report: States of Sustainability: A Review of State Projects funded by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
201 pages; PDF

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Digital Preservation, Funding, Libraries, News, Preservation, Reports