When we talk about digital preservation, we tend to focus on technology, storage, infrastructure, and the systems that allow us to protect digital content over time. We spend considerable time discussing how to preserve scholarly and cultural collections, but not enough time thinking about the people who have to convince their institutions that preservation is worth investing in. Someone has to explain why digital content needs to be protected, why resources should be allocated to something whose benefits may not be immediately visible, and why those commitments need to continue even when budgets are reduced or institutional priorities change. These conversations are not always easy, particularly when the people making the decisions have little experience with digital preservation and have many competing demands on their attention.
We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ryan Menefee of Group Project Design, who has been working with CLOCKSS and APTrust on the Preservation Advocacy Playbook, a project intended to help digital preservation practitioners become more effective advocates within their institutions. Ryan brings an interesting perspective to this work because his background is in design and project leadership rather than digital preservation itself, and his approach focuses on understanding the people involved, the challenges they encounter, and what might help them make progress. During our conversation, we discussed the development of the project, the collaboration between CLOCKSS and APTrust, and the difficulties practitioners face when trying to communicate the importance of preservation to audiences outside their professional community.
The Preservation Advocacy Playbook grew out of earlier work with the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative, which examined the sustainability of values-aligned digital preservation services and the challenges they face as the preservation landscape continues to change. One of the issues that emerged was the need for better advocacy support, particularly for practitioners who understand the technical and organizational requirements of preservation but may have difficulty securing institutional recognition and resources. This is an interesting problem because digital preservation has developed into a field with considerable expertise, professional networks, established services, and extensive guidance, yet someone can have years of preservation experience and still struggle when asked to explain to a university administrator why the institution should invest in protecting its digital collections.
Part of the difficulty may be that we often approach these conversations from the perspective of what we know rather than what the person listening to us needs to understand. We are familiar with the risks associated with digital content, the importance of maintaining multiple copies, the need to monitor file integrity, and the consequences of relying on a single platform or provider, so it seems natural to begin by explaining these things. However, someone responsible for an institutional budget may be more concerned about the financial and reputational consequences of losing access to research outputs, the university's responsibility for the collections it holds, or what happens when a service provider closes or a platform is no longer supported.
Ryan raised this issue during our conversation, pointing out that senior administrators are expected to make decisions about many areas of institutional activity and cannot reasonably be expected to understand the technical details of every service they support. A university president or provost does not need to understand how a distributed preservation network operates to recognize why the institution should protect its scholarly output. What matters is whether we can explain how preservation relates to institutional priorities, the risks associated with losing digital content, and the reasons why continued investment makes sense.
Those of us who have worked in library leadership recognize this challenge because much of our work involves explaining the value of library services to people whose priorities and responsibilities may be very different from our own. Whether the discussion concerns collections, staffing, research support, or new technologies, we have to understand what the institution is trying to achieve and explain how the library contributes to those goals. Digital preservation raises many of the same questions, although making the case can be particularly difficult because we are asking institutions to invest in protecting content against problems that may not occur for years or even decades.
Another interesting part of our conversation concerned the way people respond to the idea of advocacy itself. Some preservation professionals are comfortable making presentations, approaching institutional leaders, and building relationships across departments, while others may have considerable technical expertise but feel less confident when asked to persuade someone or initiate a conversation outside their usual area of work. Ryan's perspective is that advocacy should be understood as something people can learn and become more comfortable doing, particularly when they have practical resources that help them prepare for conversations and understand the interests of different audiences.
This is an important consideration in the development of the Preservation Advocacy Playbook because practitioners work in very different institutional environments and face different challenges depending on the maturity of their preservation activities. Someone who is just beginning to raise awareness may need help identifying allies, understanding who is responsible for digital collections, or preparing a short explanation of why preservation matters. Someone working in an institution with an established preservation program may be more concerned with securing continued funding, demonstrating the value of existing services, or ensuring that preservation becomes part of institutional policies and planning. We want the Playbook to recognize these differences and offer practical activities that people can adapt to their own circumstances, rather than assuming that one advocacy strategy will be appropriate for everyone.
The collaboration between CLOCKSS and APTrust has been particularly valuable in this respect because the two organizations bring different approaches to digital preservation and considerable experience working with institutions that have very different needs and resources. Through these relationships, we encounter recurring questions about funding, institutional responsibilities, technical capacity, and the difficulties practitioners face when trying to maintain preservation commitments over time. Some institutions have dedicated preservation teams and established infrastructure, while others depend on one or two individuals who may be managing preservation alongside several other responsibilities. Understanding these different circumstances helps us develop resources that reflect the realities of institutional work.
Ryan's design background has also influenced the way the project has developed, particularly through an iterative approach that involves creating materials, sharing them with practitioners, listening to feedback, and making changes as we learn more about what people need. Rather than trying to anticipate every possible advocacy challenge before producing anything, we have been working with draft resources that can be discussed, tested, and improved. The planned pilot will provide an opportunity for practitioners to use the Preservation Advocacy Playbook while it is still being developed and help us identify what works, what needs further explanation, and where additional resources may be useful.
We have enjoyed this collaborative approach because it encourages us to question our assumptions and think carefully about whether the materials we are producing will actually help someone prepare for a meeting, approach a colleague, or make a case for preservation. It also recognizes that practitioners often have limited time to participate in consultations or professional projects, so involving them through focused conversations and practical feedback can be more productive than asking them to commit to lengthy development processes.
One of the points that stayed with us after the interview was Ryan's emphasis on relationships and the opportunities for advocacy that arise through everyday institutional interactions. Digital preservation rarely sits entirely within one department, even when the library takes the lead. Information technology staff manage infrastructure, repository managers work with digital collections, researchers and journal editors create and publish content, and institutional leaders determine priorities and allocate resources. Each group has its own concerns, and developing relationships with these colleagues can help preservation practitioners understand where their interests overlap and how they might work together.
Ryan also reminded us that advocacy does not always require a formal presentation or a carefully prepared proposal, because sometimes a conversation with a colleague or a brief opportunity to speak with someone in a leadership position can help build awareness and open the door to further discussion. Institutional support often develops gradually, as people become more familiar with an issue and begin to understand how it relates to their own responsibilities. Being able to explain preservation in clear, relevant terms, and having the confidence to initiate those conversations, can therefore be an important part of making progress.
One of the problems we have seen over the years is that institutional support for digital preservation can change quite easily, even when a program has been running successfully for some time. A new library director may have different priorities, a university may decide to reduce spending, or the person who originally made the case for preservation may leave the institution. When this happens, activities that were previously supported can suddenly become difficult to maintain, particularly if very few people outside the library understand what the preservation program does or why the institution is paying for it. We tend to concentrate on getting preservation programs started, but we also need to think about how to keep them going, especially when the people who originally supported them are no longer involved.
During our conversation with Ryan, we talked about how much preservation depends on decisions that are made by people who may know very little about the subject. A university might decide to move its repository to another platform, change the way its digital collections are managed, or reorganize the departments responsible for them, without necessarily considering what these decisions mean for preservation. By the time preservation staff become involved, some of the important decisions may already have been made. We have seen similar situations in other areas of library management, where the people who understand the long-term consequences of a decision are not always included in the discussions that lead up to it. This is one of the reasons why we believe preservation practitioners need to be part of conversations taking place beyond their own departments, even when those conversations do not initially appear to be about preservation.
In developing the Preservation Advocacy Playbook, we have been thinking about the kinds of situations practitioners encounter and what might help them respond. For example, how do you approach a senior administrator who has never heard of your preservation service, or explain to a colleague in IT why a planned system change might affect content that needs to remain accessible for many years? How do you make the case for continuing a preservation subscription when budgets are being reviewed, particularly if nobody can point to a recent incident in which the service was needed? These are fairly ordinary situations in institutional life, and they are often difficult precisely because there is no straightforward answer. We are not suggesting that a good argument will automatically persuade someone to provide funding, but knowing how to approach the conversation, who else should be involved, and what information might be useful can improve the chances that preservation will be considered before decisions are finalized.
Working with Ryan has been particularly interesting because he has encouraged us to look at these questions from the perspective of the people who will eventually use the Playbook. His experience in design and project management has brought a different way of thinking to our discussions, especially when we find ourselves becoming too focused on what we believe practitioners should know rather than what they actually need help doing. We have enjoyed the conversations and the process of developing the materials together with our colleagues at APTrust, and we are looking forward to hearing how practitioners respond as the work progresses. We would like the Preservation Advocacy Playbook to reflect the difficulties people encounter in their institutions, including the small, everyday conversations and decisions that rarely receive much attention but can have a considerable influence on whether digital preservation receives the support it needs.
Watch our conversation with Ryan Menefee to learn more about the Preservation Advocacy Playbook, the collaboration between CLOCKSS and APTrust, and our approach to making digital preservation advocacy more practical and accessible.
You can re-watch the webinar, below: