Survey of Staffing Practices and Needs Related to Digital Preservation, 2012 (ICPSR 34901)

Version Date: Dec 13, 2013

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Principal Investigator(s):
National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NSDA). Standards and Practices Working Group.

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34901.v1

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Summary

Businesses, cultural memory institutions, repositories, and government bodies seeking to preserve digital assets responsibly face significant staffing challenges. How many staff and what types of positions are required? What skills, education, and experience are appropriate? Should the organization hire new staff or retrain existing staff? What functions should be scoped as part of the program? In 2012, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Standards and Practices Working Group conducted a survey of institutions responsible for digital preservation to gain insight into how organizations worldwide were some of these questions. Survey respondents were asked to describe their organization type (library, archives, data repository, etc.), how much storage they were using for digital content, expected growth in preserved content over the next year, which types of activities were considered part of the scope of the digital preservation function, which activities were outsourced, whether there was a dedicated digital preservation department, how many FTEs were currently doing digital preservation work and how many would be ideal, which functions the digital preservation staff filled, whether the staffing arrangement worked well, whether the organization hired experienced digital preservation specialists or retrained existing staff, and the importance of various skills in hiring a new digital preservation manager. The survey received responses from 11 unique countries. The eleven options for repository type we provided were each represented. We also received additional responses in the free-text section that could constitute additional repository types.

Citation

National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NSDA). Standards and Practices Working Group. Survey of Staffing Practices and Needs Related to Digital Preservation, 2012. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-12-13. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34901.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2012-07-18 -- 2012-09-04

Date of Collection

2012-07-18 -- 2012-09-04

Data Collection Notes

  1. The zipped package contains SPSS, Microsoft Word, Comma-separated values, and text files pertaining to the publication.

  2. These data are part of ICPSR's Replication Datasets and are distributed exactly as they arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.

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Sample

Institutions answering the survey responded to announcements distributed via the listservs and Web sites of these organizations: National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), DigiPres, International Association of Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST), Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Society of American Archives, Digital Curation Google Group, International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) Preservation Working Group, Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), Museum Computer Network (MCN), Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), Preservation Administrators Discussion Group (PADG-ALA PARS), and Digital Library Federation (DLF). Data were collected at the institutional level, with no control from the NDSA regarding who within an institution completed the survey.

Universe

Organizations around the world responsible for digital preservation.

Unit(s) of Observation

institution

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Response Rates

The survey was started 131 times and completed 85 times for a 65 percent completion rate.

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Original Release Date

2013-10-01

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:

  • National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NSDA). Standards and Practices Working Group. Survey of Staffing Practices and Needs Related to Digital Preservation, 2012. ICPSR34901-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-10-01. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34901.v1

2013-12-13 Updated citation information for related publication.

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Notes

  • These data are flagged as replication datasets and are distributed exactly as they arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.