Paul Stokes is Jisc - Subject Matter Expert (Digital Preservation), Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition; Chair of the DPC Advocacy and community engagement committee; Director of the Open Preservation Foundation; Director of OPF NL.
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Hidden dog - Image by Vanessa SG from Pixabay
Shhhh—don’t mention digital preservation
(I had so many potential titles for this blog and I couldn’t choose between them… … so I decided to use them all at various places in the text).
Firstly…
HAPPY WORLD DIGITAL PRESERVATION DAY!
Okay, onto the meat…
One of the three underlying themes of this years iPRES was “Starting to preserve”. Various groups amongst the organisers discussed for many months how this might manifest itself at the conference... and beyond. Early in in the discussions it became apparent that there was a strong desire to leave a lasting legacy in the region, a digital preservation community of practice to keep fanning the flame of digital presentation interest that (hopefully) would be ignited through localised activities at the conference.
Discussions around how this might be achieved exposed hitherto unexpected (or at least unsurfaced) problems that would need to be overcome. Problems including who exactly would the target audience be; how could they be reached; how we could make the case for digital preservation to them when they may not even realise that they had a problem.
In my mind that last one is perhaps the most insidious of all. There’s no point is shouting from the rooftops about this massive ,looming problem called “Digital Preservation” that’s about to be really, really important to them if, as soon as you utter the words “Digital Preservation”, they immediately switch off their brain because “it’s got nothing to do with them”.
Talk about falling on stony ground…
But if you put the message into terms they do recognise and describe situations they have encountered (or at the very least know someone who has encountered them) then they start to listen. Call it something like “keeping your photos safe” or “making sure you can still access your old emails”. Almost everyone in this day and age has encountered (digital) photos and email (unless they’ve been living under a rock).
Build it and they will come?
Registration desk - Web Summit - Piaras Ó Mídheach, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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Nope. Not going to happen.
If your target audience don’t relate to the wonderful opportunity you’re peddling they sure as hell won’t just rock up to your shiny new event. How do you get over that problem? One way is to infiltrate an existing community that don’t know they have a problem.
At Jisc we interact with many communities of practice (generally centred around education and research in the Highter and Further Education sectors). Most of them have a core focus already (finance, students, IT, etc.)… and they all have a need for digital preservation. They simply don’t know it (yet). I will go to any of these communities (and others outside of the Jisc immediate family) in stealth mode at the drop of a hat to preach the gospel of digital preservation keeping your digital stuff safe.
You should do the same.
Key Take away!
All the above is why, at the iPRES workshop discussing the formation of a local community of practice in Flanders, I put forward two core rules of engagement for encounters with the uninitiated.
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NEVER mention digital preservation in your first encounter with a new audience
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Always go to them. Expecting them to come and see you is foolish.
The jargon and specialised concepts can come later when they’re sold on the idea and more engaged.
So….