Introduction

Digital preservation relies on a wide range of skills and services, so digital preservation managers need to coordinate a diverse set of skills, policies, tools and services from disparate sources. For some organisations digital preservation is entirely new and the relevant resources will need to be assembled for the first time. Even established programmes will face new challenges and therefore the range of tools and services required may constantly change. Hence the ability to communicate with other staff, departments, and organisations has emerged as a key skill for successful digital preservation managers.

Because technology and staff continue to change, communication and advocacy must be an ongoing rather than a one-off activity.

In the early days of digital preservation, communication and advocacy involved blunt statements about the social and economic impact of data loss and obsolescence. As solutions have emerged, so messages have had to become more subtle.

Advocacy has become increasingly about identifying stakeholders and helping them understand:

how their choices make digital collections more or less resilient; and
the benefits they will accrue from the active management of well-formed and accessible digital materials
the necessity of investment – whether time, money or other resources – and the extent to which it is required to achieve these benefits.

In an institutional setting this means understanding all the agents involved in a digital object lifecycle, helping them to prioritise and support those actions that make and keep collections robust, and discouraging those actions which put collections at risk. Over the years the DPC has provided numerous tools to support internal advocacy including the Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit, the Curation Costs Exchange and a very substantial body of blog posts and reports. There’s no shortage of resources, but the need remains for digital preservation staff to be persistent and effective advocates for their work.

This one-day training workshop will help provide attendees with skills and ideas for identifying stakeholders and champions required to affect change, ways to showcase digital preservation as an indispensable service for their organisation and resources to help support their organisational advocacy activities.

The workshop will:

Identify common challenges when advocating for digital preservation within organisations which do not manage content as a core function
Align advocacy messages with organisational priorities
Demonstrate ways of identifying the value and relevance of digital preservation
Help attendees build their own tailor-made advocacy messages

Indicative Programme

10.00 - Registration opens, tea and coffee
10.30 - Welcome and Introductions
10.45 - Interrogating the challenge and support to address it.
11.30 - Thinking strategically: tools and tactics for advocating within your organisation
13.00 - Lunch (provided)
14.00 - What’s worked: stories of success
14.45 - Exercise: strategizing and developing and elevator pitch (With tea and coffee).
15.15 - Feedback and elevator pitches
16.00 - The Speech: using key moments to embed and win support outside your organisation
16.30 - Close

Registration

Registration is free for members of the DPC and £50 for non-members. There is a limit of 3 places per member (incl. consortia and membership organisations) and these will be available on a 'first come, first served' basis. Additional registrations will be accepted but will be placed on the wait list until registration closes a week before the event, at which time they will be distributed equally amongst members. To check if your organisation qualifies for free attendance, please check the DPC Member List. If you have any questions about registration please contact Sarah Middleton (sarah.middleton[at]dpconline.org).

The workshops usually fill up quickly, so early registration is recommended. DPC members can claim their free place by entering the discount code DPCMEMBER. Cancellations will be accepted until one week before the event, a 'no show' fee of £50 will be charged for those who cancel after this time.

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Advocating for Digital Preservation