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To Learn More Contact
Scott Garrison
Executive Director
Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS)
garrisons@mcls.org

The goals of The Statewide & Regional Stepping Stones to the National Digital Platform Project have been to conduct research and develop organizational resources to help establish and proliferate new collaborative and sustainable distributed digital preservation (DDP) networks across the country at the state/regional level where scaling to broader national networks has already been most effectively demonstrated.

A few noteworthy examples of successful state/regional networks that are already in existence include the Historically Black Colleges & University Library Alliance (HBCU LA), the Alabama Digital Preservation Network (ADPNet), the Indiana Digital Preservation Network (InDiPres), and the Texas Digital Library.

Building on these network exemplars and using Michigan as a testbed and starting point, this one-year planning grant (December 2018-November 2019) produced a set of unique community-building resources to plan the state’s own future network and guide the launch of new networks at other state/regional levels. The Stepping Stones Collaboration Toolkit is the culmination of this work. 

For national impact the Collaboration Toolkit has been developed as generalized, adaptable, yet comprehensive resource for addressing all of the unique opportunities and challenges that other states/regions might face in establishing and streamlining their own networks.

The project and this resource continue to achieve impact beyond the life of the project through rigorous evaluation by our state/regional partners and through strategically leveraging ongoing feedback from national-level communities like the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) and the Digital Library Federation (DLF).

See our Project Research page for details on how the ambitious goals of this project are being achieved.