Prioritizing Digital Preservation Education in the South: A Proposal to Host the First Ever POWRR (Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources) Workshop in the Southeast
FAIN: PG-280816-21
Rollins College (Winter Park, FL 32789-4499)
Rachel Walton (Project Director: January 2021 to September 2023)
Hosting a two-day workshop on digital preservation for 24 participants from Florida and the southeastern region of the U.S. The workshop would benefit the two-person staff of Rollins College’s Archives and Special Collections unit, who manage an increasing volume of digitized humanities content and born-digital records, as well as archivists in the region who face similar challenges within smaller humanities organizations. The Rollins Digital Archives includes 4,500 digitized archival items and artifacts documenting local architecture and the experiences of communities during the Civil Rights era. Local partnerships are also central to the college’s born-digital collecting efforts, which include coverage of the annual programming and photography from the ZORA! Festival in Eatonville through regular website and social media captures. For the archivists at Rollins and similar organizations who do not currently have in-house systems for the long-term preservation of digital assets or the resources to outsource this work, the workshop would provide training in digital preservation activities, such as performing fixity checks, capturing automated metadata, and migrating files. Additionally, the cohort attending the training would expand the community of digital preservation practitioners within the region.
Rollins College will organize and host a free, two-day Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources (POWRR) Institute in coordination with the 2022 Society of Florida (SFA) Archivists Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida for up to 24 archival professionals working in the State of Florida and/or across the Southeastern U.S. This training opportunity will benefit archival practitioners in the region by providing access to educational materials about, hands-on training with, and tangible deliverables for digital preservation standards and best practices. The curriculum will be facilitated by trained POWRR Institute instructors, and event logistics will be co-planned and executed by local archivists Rachel Walton (Rollins College) and Mary Rubin (UCF) in coordination with SFA leadership. The project will allow Rollins College to further its digital preservation plans and help build and support an active community of preservation practitioners across the Southeast region.