The Content Working Group is focusing on investigating guidelines for the selection of significant content, discovery of at-risk digital content or collections, and engaging all stakeholders in the process of acquiring the content, preserve it, and provide access to it. The Content Working Group’s current scope of work involves "content teams" grouped in the following topical areas:

• Government
• Geospatial
• News, Media, and Journalism
• Science, Mathematics, Technology and Medicine
• Social Sciences
• Cultural Heritage
• Arts & Humanities

The Content Teams are assessing and selecting categories of content in their topical areas that are important for preserving. The groups are developing case studies and/or models to share broadly with all stakeholders, from content producers to cultural heritage organizations. The goal of the case studies is to engage all members of the community in the preservation of content and to encourage the cultivation of relationships that could enable preservation.

Case Studies will:

• Establish the value of the content and provide the rationale for selecting it for preservation. What value does the content have? Is anyone collecting it? What factors affect its risk of disappearance?
• Document recognized opportunities for preserving this content. Are there workflows in the creation or distribution of content that present opportunities for preservation?
• Describe target audiences/stakeholders. Who would find value in this content and how might they be engaged in the process of preservation?
• Outline a plan for educating stakeholders. How might NDSA or another organization raise the awareness of stakeholders including content creators, publishers, educators, libraries, researchers, or donors?
• Describe potential obstacles or risk factors. What barriers for users/creators/preservationists might be faced and what options are there for overcoming them?
• Develop actionable next steps. What can we do next, as a community or as individual institutions to ensure that important content is preserved?

Additionally, Content Working Group Members have been engaged in:

• A blog preservation plugin to easily enable content creators to opt-in to preservation.
• A survey of organizations in the United States who are actively involved in or planning to archive content from the web. The goal of the survey, held in October 2011, was to better understand the landscape of web archiving activities in the United States, including what organizations or individuals are archiving, what types of web content are being preserved, the tools and services being used, and what type of access is being provided for researchers. A report of the survey results is now available (PDF, 442 KB). The survey questions (PDF, 272 KB) are also available for reference.

NDSA questions? Send an email to ndsa@loc.gov.

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