The National Digital Stewardship Alliance, a voluntary membership organization of leading government, academic, and private sector organizations with digital stewardship responsibilities, has announced the inaugural release of the National Agenda for Digital Stewardship.

Digital stewardship is the series of managed activities, policies, strategies and actions that ensure that digital content of vital importance to the nation is acquired, managed, organized, preserved and accessible for as long as necessary.

The National Agenda will annually highlight emerging technological trends, identify gaps in digital stewardship capacity and provide funders and decision-makers with insight into the work needed to ensure that today’s valuable digital content remains accessible and comprehensible in the future, supporting a thriving economy, a robust democracy, and a rich cultural heritage.

The 2014 Agenda integrates the perspective of dozens of experts and hundreds of institutions, convened through the Library of Congress. It outlines the challenges and opportunities related to digital preservation activities in four broad areas: Organizational Roles, Policies, and Practices; Digital Content Areas; Infrastructure Development; and Research Priorities.

The National Agenda identifies a number of areas targeted for key investment, including:

• Digital Stewardship Training and Staffing
• Applied Research on Information Valuation, Curation Cost and effective auditing
• Experiments in Interoperability and Portability of Storage Architectures
• Integration of Digital Forensics Tools into Stewardship Workflows
• Development of the evidence base through surveys, experiments and testbeds

Over the coming year the NDSA will work to promote the Agenda and explore educational and collaborative opportunities with all interested parties.

Founded in 2010, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) is a consortium of over 145 member institutions committed to the long-term preservation and stewardship of digital information. NDSA member institutions come from all sectors, and include universities, consortia, professional societies, commercial business, professional associations, and government agencies at the federal, state, and local level.

UNT is a founding member of the NDSA. Martin Halbert, Dean of Libraries, serves on the NDSA Technology Working Group and Cathy Hartman, Associate Dean of Libraries, serves on the NDSA Content Working Group.