I found an interesting article that talked about training library professionals to help them with digitally preserving information. The training was a workshop that began around 1995 and lasted until 2005. The workshop was presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center(NEDCC)and their main focus was preservation. Within the workshop their goal was to stress the importance of standards, quality, and assuring long-term access to digital collections (Russell, 2007). Many of the professionals that attended these workshops had no previous interaction with digitally preserving materials so the NEDCC had to deal with teaching them how to get started. To address this issue they held discussions on whether they should or should not digitize information.
Throughout the course of the trainings there was one thing that become more and more relevant to the NEDCC instructors. They began to notice trends throughout all their trainings. They noticed that more and more people who were attending the trainings were expecting to be told word for word how to digitally preserve information. This wasn't what the NEDCC wanted to do. So they basically held discussions where the professionals were able to go back to their jobs with a list of questions so that they can begin to ask questions in the planning stages of their digital projects.
This was a very interesting article to read because it helped me to be aware of the issues that professionals deal with when it comes to digitally preserving information. I think that more and more trainings should be available for individuals, not only because someone is new to a job, but also because over the years things can change and people need to be updated on how to do those new things.
SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you think that library professionals should be given the opportunity to attend workshops like the one that the NEDCC offered? Yes or no, and why.
Reference
Russell, A. (2007). Training professionals to preserve digital heritage: the school for scanning.Library Trends,56(1),288-297.
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I believe there is a need for librarians to learn how to digitally preserve information. As you gathered from the article too many were just waiting for instruction instead of looking at the methods available and determining how those would work with the library's current systems. Too often projects like digital preservation are being delegated to the larger organizations just because it is seen as an all or nothing exercise. But the smaller libraries can help as well.
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