Community archives hold irreplaceable local heritage, such as birth records from closed hospitals, union meeting minutes, and neighborhood association photographs. When these groups digitize their collections, they often lack the expertise to preserve them properly. Your established cultural heritage organization can help, but you need the right framework to do it effectively.
The Digital Preservation Coalition's Global Ambassador Programme offers a structured approach for cultural heritage organizations to support community groups with digital preservation. The program launched its pilot in October 2025 and will open worldwide in December 2026. Here's how to evaluate whether your organization is ready to participate and what you need in place before you commit.
What This Checklist Covers
This checklist helps you assess your organization's readiness to become a Global Ambassador and support community archives in your region. It covers organizational prerequisites, capability requirements, and the practical steps needed to deliver effective digital preservation guidance to community groups.
Prerequisites
Before you work through the main checklist, verify these baseline conditions:
Your organization qualifies. You operate as an established cultural heritage organization with documented experience managing digital collections. You don't need to be a Digital Preservation Coalition member, but you must demonstrate active collection management responsibilities.
You have institutional support. Your leadership has approved staff time for community outreach and training delivery. This isn't a side project for one person; it requires organizational commitment.
You understand your community landscape. You've identified at least three community groups in your region that maintain digital collections and would benefit from preservation support. You know what types of materials they hold and what challenges they face.
Readiness Checklist
1. Staff Capability Assessment
☐ At least one staff member has completed formal digital preservation training (DPC certification, SAA courses, or equivalent professional development). Good looks like: documented training certificates and the ability to explain OAIS concepts in plain language to non-specialists.
☐ Your team can explain file format risks in practical terms. You don't just know that JPEG2000 has better longevity than proprietary formats; you can show a community volunteer why it matters for their oral history recordings. Good looks like: scenario-based explanations that connect technical choices to access outcomes.
☐ You have experience teaching non-technical audiences. Digital preservation training for community groups differs from professional development. Good looks like: documented workshops or training sessions delivered to volunteers, board members, or community stakeholders with varied technical backgrounds.
2. Infrastructure and Resource Review
☐ Your organization maintains documented preservation workflows. You follow written procedures for ingest, metadata creation, and fixity checking. Good looks like: procedure documents that specify tools, frequency, and responsible parties, not just conceptual policies.
☐ You can demonstrate preservation practices, not just describe them. Community groups learn by seeing working examples. Good looks like: the ability to walk someone through your actual preservation repository, showing how you implement checksum verification or migration planning.
☐ Your organization has allocated time for community support. Staff schedules reflect the hours needed for outreach, training preparation, and follow-up consultation. Good looks like: quarterly time allocations in work plans, not aspirational goals without resource backing.
3. Community Engagement Capacity
☐ You've mapped community archive locations and contact points in your service area. You know who manages the historical society's digitization project, which neighborhood associations maintain photo collections, and where community groups gather. Good looks like: a contact database with collection descriptions and preservation needs assessments.
☐ You understand barriers community groups face. Through direct conversations, you've identified whether groups lack storage, software knowledge, staff continuity, or funding. Good looks like: documented needs assessments that go beyond assumptions about "limited resources."
☐ Your organization can provide ongoing support, not one-time training. Community archives need sustained guidance as they implement preservation practices. Good looks like: commitment to quarterly check-ins, email consultation availability, and troubleshooting support for at least twelve months.
4. Toolkit Familiarity
☐ You've reviewed the Digital Preservation Toolkit for Community Archives. You understand its structure, recommendations, and how it addresses common community archive scenarios. Good looks like: the ability to map toolkit sections to specific community needs you've identified.
☐ You can adapt toolkit guidance to local context. You recognize where toolkit recommendations need modification for your region's technical infrastructure, language requirements, or cultural practices. Good looks like: annotated toolkit sections with notes on local adaptation points.
☐ You've identified gaps the toolkit doesn't address for your communities. No single resource covers everything. Good looks like: a documented list of supplementary resources or local expertise you'll need to provide alongside the toolkit.
Common Mistakes
Treating this as a marketing opportunity rather than a service commitment. Community groups need practical help implementing preservation workflows, not promotional materials about your organization's capabilities. If your primary goal is visibility rather than capacity building, you're not ready.
Assuming technical knowledge transfers directly. You understand OAIS and ISO 14721, but community volunteers need to understand "why we make two copies" before they care about reference models. Skipping the translation step creates confusion, not competence.
Underestimating follow-up requirements. Community groups will email you six months after training when their volunteer coordinator changes and no one remembers the backup procedure. If you can't commit to sustained support, initial training creates dependency without sustainability.
Focusing on tools instead of decisions. Community groups don't need to know which preservation repository your institution uses. They need frameworks for deciding what to keep, how long to keep it, and when format migration makes sense for their context.
Next Steps
If you've checked every item and addressed the common mistakes, you're positioned to register when the Global Ambassador Programme opens worldwide in December 2026. Registration will be available through the Digital Preservation Coalition website for both members and non-members.
Before December, use this preparation period to strengthen any weak areas in your checklist. Document your current preservation workflows if you haven't already. Schedule conversations with community groups to understand their specific needs. Allocate staff time in your next budget cycle.
The program aims to build a global network of organizations that can expand access to digital preservation expertise. Your readiness determines whether you contribute to that network or create additional burden for under-resourced community archives.
For questions about program requirements or readiness assessment, contact Karyn Williamson at [email protected].
