This is a guest post by Barrie Howard.
(left to right) Anne Abate, Anne Ryckbost, Joseph Shankweiler, Suellyn Lathrop, Heather Fox, Amy Rudersdorf, Mary Molinaro, Brittany Netherton, George Coulbourne, Lynn Kahkola, Sam Meister, Rachel Howard, Dieter Ullrich, Lori Thompson, Sarah Hopley, Jamie Haddix, Jackie Couture, Denise Fritsch, AJ Boston.
The Library of Congress’s Digital Preservation Outreach and Education program delivered a train-the-trainer workshop on June 10, providing professional development in digital preservation to library professionals from Kentucky and West Virginia.
The workshop was held at Northern Kentucky University and sponsored by the State Assisted Academic Library Council of Kentucky, which recruited 14 workshop participants from six of its member institutions, two from the Federation of Kentucky Academic Libraries and one from West Virginia.
The event in Kentucky marks the eighth workshop since the program began in 2010, which has trained 173 working professionals to date. The first workshop was held at the Library of Congress and since then the workshops have traveled as far afield as Alaska and Australia. Two more workshops are planned for the fall: one in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and one in Jackson, Mississippi.
The aim of the DPOE workshops is to produce a corps of trainers equipped to teach others the basic principles and practices of preserving digital materials. In this way, DPOE’s “teach-a-person-to-fish” model extends the workshop beyond only those who can attend.
DPOE trainers go on to develop training events of their own and have held webinars and workshops in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest and Southeast regions of the United States, events that will be replicated across Kentucky over the next year. After each workshop, the new trainers enter into a network of practitioners and continue to engage with each other – and the broader digital-preservation community – online.
DPOE supports this network by providing an email-distribution list that allows practitioners to share information about digital-preservation best practices, services and tools, as well as stories about their experiences in advancing digital preservation.
SAALCK executive director Anne Abate worked with the Library’s George Coulbourne, chief of Internship and Fellowship Programs Division, and the three anchor instructors for the workshop: Sam Meister (Educopia Institute), Mary Molinaro (Digital Preservation Network) and Amy Rudersdorf (AVPreserve). The instructors have provided subject-matter expertise to the program in the past, offering guidance to DPOE by reviewing and revising the baseline curriculum for the workshop.
The workshops are just one way that DPOE seeks to foster outreach and education about digital preservation on a national scale. DPOE maintains a training calendar as a public service to assist working professionals discover continuing education opportunities in the practice of digital preservation. The calendar is updated monthly and includes training events hosted by DPOE trainers.