Dancing with Donors: Trust-Building Across Gaps of Curation Priorities

Virginia Tech University Libraries (VTUL) serves a range of cultural heritage, academic, and local communities aligned in the goal to “get stuff online and accessible.” Despite the same overarching goal, the specific requirements from each party to reach that goal do not always overlap. The initial dance of negotiation between library and donor collaborations sets the tone for the ongoing relationship between the two. Across the departments in VTUL that manage such relationships with donors and curate digital collections, there are common trends emerging in barriers and observations with building relationships, and also with the concessions, compromises, and adjustments made to meet the curation needs of both parties. There are noted gaps in priorities and knowledge of curation processes, expectations around the understanding of digital collections, communication and roles and responsibilities, and resource understandability and availability. This paper specifically addresses relationships with donors and that impact on the subsequent work resulting from agreement with both parties. Continuing the iPRES conversation around community archiving and successful collaborations, the authors of this paper look critically at their partnerships with donors of digital material. This paper aligns with the conference theme “Start 2 preserve” in that it both addresses the barriers to entering the digital preservation landscape for the non-librarian community, and the barriers of digital preservation practitioners in aligning collaborator needs with digital curation needs. The authors focus on spotlighting the learning curve present on both sides of the work of community archiving. In recognizing recurrent gaps in understanding, this paper aims to be a part of a larger conversation on how community partnerships can blossom with built trust and understanding, coupled with robust planning and technical capability.