National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Releases “Levels of Digital Preservation 2.0”

From a NDSA Blog Post:

After over a year of hard work, the Levels of Digital Preservation Working group announces the Levels of Digital Preservation 2.0!

In 2018 the NDSA sent out a call to the larger digital preservation community asking for interest in updating the Levels of Preservation.  Response was high – 125 individuals responded! NDSA then convened the Levels of Preservation Working group, which divided up into subgroups to tackle the many areas the community wanted to see addressed in a Levels Reboot. Individuals worked with their chosen subgroups.

Learn More About the Project and Additional Materials

From the Introduction to the Levels of Preservation 2.0

The NDSA launched its Levels of Digital Preservation (LoP) guidelines in 2013 as a tiered set of recommendations on how organizations should begin to build or enhance their digital preservation activities. They function as a key tool to help practitioners of all levels deploy a sustainable digital preservation strategy. Since that time practitioners across the globe have been working with the guidelines and some have been extending and adapting them.

The original intent of the LoP was to create tiered set of recommendations for either preservation practitioners who were just starting out or for those looking to deepen their preservation strategy. Not meant as a comprehensive preservation strategy but rather a lightweight tool to encourage organizations to think through preservation issues. The LoP were organized into five functional areas that are at the heart of digital preservation systems: storage and geographic location, file fixity and data integrity, information security, metadata, and file formats. By design, they do not cover policy staffing, or other organizational considerations. They are considered to be a technological implementation of a variety of preservation decisions and are utilized by many organizations across the country and even internationally.

With the current rapid changes in technology, a document that functions as the technological implementation of a preservation strategy, needs updating after 5 years. In addition, after 5 years of active use, users have expressed the need to add features and considerations.

Direct to Resource  Levels of Digital Preservation 2.0

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Digital Preservation, News, Patrons and Users, Preservation