Our task in Digital Curation this week was to formulate an ‘elevator pitch’ to make the case for establishing a digital preservation programme at our small local authority archive. We chose to make the case for employing a new member of staff who specialises in digital preservation. We were given a fictional scenario which we adapted for our pitch and we chose to imagine that we had recently been offered the contents of the office of well-known science fiction author Naomi Alderman. Our instructions were as follows: “You are the archivist at a small local authority archive, looking to establish a new digital preservation programme. As well as council records the archive also collects the records from notable local residents, voluntary organisations, and a wide range of local community groups. Many of the groups represent communities that are not always well represented in archives. You’ve been tracking the analogue vs. digital contents of the collections you receive and noticed born-digital records are now forming the largest portion of new accessions. You’ve also recently been offered the contents of the office of a well-known science fiction author by her estate. The offer includes her laptop and several external hard drives which contain the research and drafts for all the novels she wrote in the last 20 years.”
Here is what we came up with:
“One of the most pressing considerations for the future of our archive to employ a new member of staff who specialises in digital preservation and curation. The implementation of this new role has never been more vital, as the majority of our new accessions are now born digital.
Now is a timely opportunity for our archive to invest in digital preservation as we have just been offered the collection of local author Naomi Alderman. Alderman has been influential in encouraging greater representation for female writers in the science-fiction genre. Alderman is also known for developing a popular fitness app called ZombiesRun, which forms part of her donation to our repository. The preservation of her materials would be of great significance to the local community. It is likely that, if this opportunity is seized, it would create increased interest in our archive, but to ensure the longevity of this success, we need to invest in our digital preservation programme.
We have already invested time and money to preserve our physical collections and we need to make the same considerations towards our digital collections. This investment will help minimise the risk of losing digital information which is rapidly becoming integral to our community’s lives and collective memories.”
After writing our pitch we considered the following questions:
How did you prioritised what to include?
Based on our hypothetical scenario, we prioritised establishing a new digital preservation programme – with which we will need the help of a new staff member with the expertise. We acknowledged that our archive collects records from the local community and so want to involve and engage with them, increasing their representation within the archives. In addition, given that we are receiving more born-digital records, we realise that this would be an important factor to highlight in our pitch.
What do you think worked well?
We had a clear goal in mind – employ a new Digital Preservation & Curation staff member. We also provided strong reasoning for why this new role was important for the archive and future-proofing our collections.
What you would change if you were to redraft it?
We have written in a pretty formal style which may work if we were presenting to a board meeting but might not necessarily work as well in a more informal setting such as a conversation in an elevator. We also could have considered mentioning the financial implications of hiring a new staff members, both the financial costs and the benefits.
Here are some references we looked at (all accessed February 5th, 2020):
https://preservica.com/blog/advocating-for-digital-preservation-through-better-corporate-and-information-governance
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e279/1ff039755a787c3fef9cea3fec2c16d72a22.pdf
http://files.archivists.org/pubs/SamplerSeries/ArchivalAdvocacySampler.pdf
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/archives/evaluation-of-archives-for-21st-century.pdf
https://issuesandadvocacy.wordpress.com/advocacy-toolkit/
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/series/challenge/web_harvest_challenge.html
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015032210059&view=1up&seq=12
Good IMPressions 