Sunday, April 22, 2012

Help the Library of Congress build a Digital Preservation Q&A site

The Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) is creating a Digital Preservation Question and Answer site using Stack Exchange, a social media service that enables communities of people knowledgeable about a specific subject to develop libraries of reference questions and answers pertaining to that subject.

Right now, the Digital Preservation Question and Answer site is still in the initial stages of creation.  In order to progress to the next stage, the site needs to accumulate at least 40 community-suggested questions that have received at least 10 positive votes from community members.

I'm a big fan of NDIIPP, and I think that this Q & A site could become a really valuable resource for archivists, librarians, and other cultural heritage professionals interested in preserving digital materials.  If you want to help get this site off the ground, simply:
  • Visit the Digital Preservation Stack Exchange Q & A site (currently located in Area 51 -- click the link and you'll see what I mean)
  • Become a registered user.
  • Review the list of proposed questions, identify the five questions that you would most like to see answered in the final version of the site, and vote for them.
  • If you think of additional questions, add them to the list of proposed questions.
It took me about 10 minutes to register, read through everything, cast my votes, and propose a question, so the investment of time is minimal. Judging from the caliber of questions others proposed, this site promises to be a fantastic resource. I'm really looking forward to seeing it grow.

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