Digital POWRR Professional Development Institutes for Digital Preservation

FAIN: PE-284404-22

Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL 60115-2828)
Jaime Schumacher (Project Director: May 2021 to present)

Five Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources (POWRR) Program training sessions on the standards, processes, and tools used to curate and preserve digital objects using open-source software. The 150 participants would largely come from grassroots cultural heritage organizations responsible for the curation and preservation of materials of historically marginalized groups, including Native Americans, African Americans, and members of the Latinx community.

The proposed project will provide librarians, archivists, and museum professionals with new skills to be used in the preservation of humanities materials in digital formats. It will hold five events, each of 2.5 days in length and serving 30 practitioners, reaching a total of 150 practitioners. The program will provide financial assistance to be used for travel to and from project events to practitioners whose organizations cannot afford to support their travel in full. Program leaders will work with organizations representing practitioners responsible for Native American, African American, and Latinx materials to recruit participants and design curriculum and evaluation materials.