Abstract – 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.

Keywords – community archives, digital archives, digital preservation, donors, collaboration

This paper was submitted for the iPRES2024 conference on March 17, 2024 and reviewed by Lauren Work, Jaye Weatherburn and 2 anonymous reviewers. The paper was accepted with reviewer suggestions on May 6, 2024 by co-chairs Heather Moulaison-Sandy (University of Missouri), Jean-Yves Le Meur (CERN) and Julie M. Birkholz (Ghent University & KBR) on behalf of the iPRES2024 Program Committee.

Introduction

In the realm of data curation and collection management, Virginia Tech University Libraries (VTUL) serves a range of cultural heritage, academic, and local communities. Unified by the overarching goals of making materials accessible online, these communities often navigate different paths to reach this goal based on the specific requirements from each party that do not always overlap. Continuing the iPRES conversation around community archiving and successful collaborations, the authors in this paper delve into the evolving landscape of relationships between libraries and donors of digital material, and the subsequent impact on collection sustainability.

The term “donor” in this case can be viewed as a spectrum from passive contributors whose involvement may mostly precede repository receipt of materials, to more collaborative donor-partners who may be involved in many aspects of collection processing and description. We recognize that more and more often the librarian/donor relationship doesn't end after material is accessioned, returned from digitization, or deposited in a digital preservation service. Similarly, factors impacting digital preservation do not begin at the point the preservation system receives it, or even at the point of appraisal, but even earlier when the librarian/donor relationship begins, positioning donors in a critical role in the longevity and preservability of a digital collection long after it is received by the library. The initial dance of negotiation between library and donor collaborations sets the tone for the ongoing relationship between the two.

Though this collaboration across the records lifecycle not only mandates an expanded conception of roles and responsibilities, it also presents challenges in communicating shared goals, needs requirements, and standardized technical requirements, among others. Every data curation activity from documentation and material processing to metadata and digital object quality impacts the preservability of the materials. How the library understands the needs and capabilities of, and level of support that can be provided by the donor, then, impacts the overall sustainability of a digital collection.

This paper stemmed from organic conversations between library collection curators at VTUL on known knowledge gaps in storage, preservation, description, metadata, rights, and how institutional libraries function as a service within the range of University, donor, cultural heritage, and other community partners. We, the librarians, are seeing trends and gaps in knowledge across these communities, our collaborators. This paper discusses what VTUL currently provides as digital collection curation services, lowering the barrier of entry for and meeting the needs of less-resourced collaborators, and what we would like to do to better support these collaborations to support everyone. By critically examining these partnerships, we aim to highlight the gaps in knowledge and priorities between content creators and content managers. The objective is to contribute to a broader discourse on fostering trust, shared understanding, and effective planning within community partnerships, ultimately enhancing practices surrounding partner collaboration in digital preservation.

Literature Review

Types of Donors & Collaborators

Dr. Aaron D. Purcell’s seminal text [1] on archives and donors, recognizes the lack of existing research on the relationship between librarians and donors of archival collections. Purcell formalizes the how-to of building an effective donor program, while also introducing theory, particularly in the realm of donor types. While the limited research on this front is concentrated on a traditional donor role, the authors of this paper are working with community groups whose continued involvement in the lifecycle of archival objects transcends this “traditional” definition. For our purposes, a traditional donor may take a more passive role than a community or University partner, may be more inclined to have financial contribution over a contribution of labor, and may have less of a direct connection to the materials. The donor types profiled by [1] do not include non-traditional partners. These donors embody the term “collaborator” more wholly, as they may frequently be users, curators, and creators of the material. In short, there are many donor types, but this differentiation between traditional donors versus collaborative donors can frame the interests each party may have in the lifecycle of the materials.

Literature is present in the corpus addressing this expanded donor conception. There is a growing need for more transparent, clearer communication with donors [2] [3]. Whereas it is common practice for archives to understand their patron base through user profiles, Carabajal also recommends establishing donor profiles based on shared donor traits and characteristics.

Understandably, much of the work on donor relations in archives predates a newer model and focuses on legal considerations and types of donors one may work with, in an environment of primarily physical collections. This paper is primarily engaging with the relationships between collection managers and donors and the subsequent impact on the preservability of the collection. The type of donor that is less commonly found in the corpus, but is the focus here, is one that has a continued involvement in the collection lifecycle, particularly in the administration.

History & Trends in Technical vs. Interpersonal Solutions

The emergence of affordable and user-friendly consumer cloud storage products in the early 2010s led to a dearth of research on this technology’s potential for community archives. Initially, this potential was seen as a way collections could be divorced from the support structure of institutional archives. Community groups were interested not only in the newly available technology but also in the autonomy it provided, allowing a “place for preservation on their own terms” [3].

While these technological advances powered broadened interest in community-centered collections, in the professional archival world, a growing popular recognition of the role non-custodial collections could play in representative collection building acted to bring these groups together. Earlier digital preservation researchers and practitioners already began extending the idea of digital preservation as a tool for future use, to include the environment and the context [4], lending to the idea that digital preservation was and continues to be user-centric, not just technology-based.

As noted by Langley [5], most well-known digital preservation standards and models, such as the Open Archival Information System Reference Model1 and Curation Lifecycle Model2, describe the best practices and processes for handling content once it has been received by a donor, but do not provide guidance on “how data should be processed in order to wrangle it into each of the different states (i.e., a Submission Information Package, an Archival Information Package, or a Dissemination Information Package)” or on how to transfer custody and/or migrate content to the archive. Other projects like Preserving Digital Objects With Restricted Resources (Digital POWRR)3 aim to support and empower small organizations to approach digital preservation strategies independently from larger institutions.

Many librarians have developed approaches to increase donor participation in the transfer and curation process, such as identifying easy-to-use tools for donors to package and transfer their content [6], establishing private cloud storage as a network approach to plugging donors and archives into a single space [3], and developing and collecting guides specifically for improving communication with donors and the subsequent impact on processing collections [5] [2]. Others have investigated how other libraries and archives manage community and external collections, such as Makula and Turner’s 2022 study [7] on the extent to which U.S.-based libraries and archives curate collections from their local public communities, and localized studies by universities trying to understand their community’s preservation needs [8] [9].

Delineating the Role of Libraries and Partners in Sustainable Solutions

Carbajal [2] defines donors as “more than just a target group of users, but rather as a central focal point in all aspects of the archival endeavor, from appraisal to description to permissions and access.” To that end, an assessment of the strengths, capabilities, and knowledge of donors and collaborators should be an early component of a project. There is recent scholarship on the needs of donors in this type of collaborative partnership. Fenlon et al. [10] note that “sustainability efforts and partnerships often flounder on a lack of shared understanding of available expertise…of necessary commitments, and of what sustainability entails for a given project.”

Scholarship focused on the components of successful donor relationships has been concentrated in the past few years. Hindrances addressed include archives not treating donors as people, and a need for more transparent, clearer communication with donors [2] [10]. A throughline in many of the community groups’ case studies is how they articulate their vision for the sustainability of the project. Fenlon et al. [10] specifically note that “community members tended to foreground the community and its future over the artifact of the archive itself.”

As shown earlier, many newer resources addressing the expanded interpersonal dynamics between librarians and donors exist, but oftentimes solutions are not one-size-fits-all. These resources typically provide overly specific or broad information. The authors of this paper are thinking about the entire curation process from donor contact to content ingestion and maintenance. Existing models aid in guiding this collaborative effort. There is often a learning curve to collections maintenance, such as descriptive and preservation standards, and the most successful resources meet the needs of the diverse groups working with materials.

While a complete resource list is outside of the scope of this paper, for purposes of framing what defines a successful resource, two examples may be Recollection Wisconsin’s Accessing the Digital Readiness Toolkit [11], a comprehensive guide to preparing sustainable materials, and the Library of Congress’ Personal Archiving site [12], a resource specifically designed for non-librarians. These are defined by their simplicity, ease of use, and step-by-step guide, coupled with replicable forms and procedures.

Ultimately, these types of digital collections partnerships are still growing in numbers. In their survey of libraries and archives, [7] found that 76% of respondents are “collecting, curat[ing], and/or preserving materials created by the local public community or have done this work in the past.” This study provides evidence that many archives/institutions are collecting from the community with stats to prove it and gives practitioners a sense of varying approaches that are being employed.

Scope Limitations

This paper is designed based on anecdotal working relationships with current partners in the Virginia Tech and southwest Virginia communities. Many of the insights on community collaborations in this paper are derived from conversations through a grant-funded forum. In 2022 as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences Community Catalyst grant, VTUL invited representatives from cultural heritage organizations in southwest Virginia to a series of forums to discuss developing an equity-based, community-managed collection model at VTUL. De-identified transcripts4 of those forums are publicly available, but were not used as a primary source. VTUL does not have comparable data for university collaborations given the nature of each working relationship.

The authors also recognize that many guides exist for guiding the phases of the collections lifecycle, but as noted by [5] in the Literature Review, few combine all aspects of donor/library relationships, content transfer, and trusted digital repository metrics to guide librarians in the entire collaborative process. Resources like [11], [12], [13], and POWRR are geared toward collaborators, projects like [1] and the Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (paradigm)5 focuses on librarian experience, and OAIS and the Data Curational Lifecycle Model are based on digital preservation. They could be combined effectively, but this work is out of the scope of this paper’s topic, which is based on theory and experience.

For the purposes of this paper, the authors reference personal experiences from one-on-one and group conversations and are choosing to not identify specific projects or collaborators, but rather to speak on project types and their common successes and challenges.

Types of Projects

Institutional Context

Virginia Tech is a land-grant university located in southwest Virginia. In keeping with our land-grant status and our motto Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), we have obligations to support our community, which includes the Virginia Tech community of students, faculty, and staff; and our local and regional organizations. One tier of support from the Library is in collection development, data curation, and digital collection hosting for public access.

VTUL has several services where content may be ingested or hosted. VTechWorks is our institutional repository for scholarly work; the Virginia Tech Data Repository is our institutional repository for datasets; VT Publishing publishes and hosts scholarly books and journals; Special Collections and University Archives; and the Virginia Tech Digital Library. For this paper, the focus is on the latter two.

The authors of this paper are in the separate Library departments responsible for different types of collections that are the focus of this paper. Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) often handles more traditional donors, who work with the Libraries to give physical and digital materials, but increasingly broadens to include University and community collaborations beyond a typical donation. SCUA has an established scope and collection development policy and is not charged with accepting all material related to the University. They are responsible for the interpretation and stewardship of legacy digital content and interpreting predecessors’ comprehension of digital readiness. SCUA serves a broad base of scholarly researchers across its collecting areas, and while it houses material of interest to the local academic community, it is not specifically focused on supporting Virginia Tech scholarship. The Digital Libraries & Preservation (DL&P) department manages the Virginia Tech Digital Library (VTDL) and caters to digitization projects that are out of scope for SCUA but fall into a larger scope of Virginia Tech and Virginia-related content. DL&P does not have a collection development policy, instead relying on a proposal application process for stakeholders to make a case for their materials to be included in the VTDL that is reviewed by an advisory committee in the Library. DL&P also manages and maintains the central digital preservation system that serves the VTDL, SCUA, and VTechWorks.

Both departments curate collections and work with stakeholders, and though strategies and typical projects differ, the types of collaborations and their unique traits have significant overlap. At VTUL, supporting larger collaborations with many stakeholders and ongoing dialogue often falls into two broad categories; University collaborations that are internal to the Virginia Tech community; and Community collaborations that extend to local and regional cultural heritage organizations.

For this paper, the authors are less concerned with identifying the donor types specific to their respective departments and areas. Rather, they are focused on the shared challenges across custodial and non-custodial collections, and how they can be mitigated by focusing on donors’ relationship with the materials, their trust in archival institutions, and their understanding of the preservation lifecycle.

University Collaborations

The Virginia Tech community is the primary nexus for cultivating partnerships. Projects are brought to the Library with structure through grants or initiatives from other departments, and the Library can often (but not always) be involved with a project at or near the onset. The advantage is that early engagement facilitates the Library to advise on project development and collection processing and subsequent best storage and access strategies for the material and prepare if that strategy is a Library service. Roles and responsibilities and a shared understanding of the goal are easier to establish with University partners as our goals are aligned with the University’s mission and values. An example is a grant proposal designed to include librarians as consultants or co-PIs with a library storage and/or access service as a deliverable. These projects are easily integrated into established Library collection curation workflows and identify a liaison between Library personnel and project stakeholders. VTUL has an average of 3-4 active grants per year where librarians are co-PIs with University collaborators in addition to dozens more grants where librarians are in consultant roles.

The Library is also approached to contribute to ongoing projects across a spectrum of digital curation activities, usually focusing on access, storage, and data management, but rarely do they initially ask for metadata support or digital preservation. For these projects, adapting to stakeholder needs often revolves around their capacity for metadata. A project example is one that has grant funding for digitization funding from a third-party service, but without appraisal and identified storage and access. In this example, the stakeholders possess little knowledge of storage and access options and have limited metadata experience, requiring more time and attention from librarians to understand their resources and capabilities. This effort is directed at reaching at least a minimum baseline for organization, metadata, and documentation prior to ingest. Another inherent challenge with University collaborations is the potential for commitment from the Library without adherence to the formal VTDL proposal or SCUA donor process. This may occur if a senior administrator prioritizes the work, or if collaborators establish initial contact with Library personnel outside of the formal channels.

Community Collaborations

As a land-grant university, Virginia Tech has an open dialogue with regional cultural heritage organizations as well. These collaborations are much different working relationships because building trust is a primary goal. There can be tension between institutional missions and priorities and those of the organizations that are informed by the historical ebb and flow of Virginia Tech’s place in the community, which is reflective of the attitudes of communities and donors with which VTUL collaborates. As noted in the Literature Review by other scholars, there can be a certain unease or hesitation to trust a larger institution with holding physical materials even temporarily, with accurately representing the material, and representing rights to the material. This is a situation where the clout of being a larger institution is not always in our favor. As Caswell et al. [9] described in their study results, past exclusion from mainstream archives discourages community archives from engaging with them now and further maintains the barrier to entry.

Regional organizations bring other challenges to the table in addition to similar challenges for University collaborations. Community resources including funding, time, and expertise are often less robust than our University collaborators. Projects stemming from community collaborators may not be fully processed or organized before beginning negotiations. Projects may be digitized in-house in which VTUL would provide general guidance on digitization specifications. Custody of materials may also be transferred temporarily to the VTUL Digital Imaging Lab for capture and digital processing. Digital facsimiles are returned to the collaborator with the physical materials. Other projects have been digitized years in advance by the collaborator but lack a platform for hosting. An example of a difficult case of the latter is materials that were digitized several years prior and contain multiple file formats, varying quality with some items reaching a point where the VTDL should not accept it, and little organized metadata. VTDL chose to move forward with ingest, acknowledging that raising the visibility of the collection is a higher priority than maintaining a high bar for quality across the VTDL.

Comparison

Metadata creation is a primary bottleneck. Metadata work has previously been performed by VTUL, but as more community relationships are built, VTUL cannot scale upward and rely more on the collaborators for metadata creation so that our role is in quality control. The additional labor provided by the collaborators can extend the timeline for community collections as they need to be familiar with our metadata scheme in addition to creating the metadata and often lack the bandwidth to recruit more people to the project.

The bottom line is that the Library is not institutionally obligated to take anything unless it comes from a higher University authority. VTUL has historically been more oriented to work with University collaborators, leaving local organizations with the least obligation from VTUL. However, our priorities have shifted to include more diverse collections that have previously been hidden and from collaborative relationships that differ from traditional donor and collections work.

Barriers & Observations

Engaging with University and Community collaborators carries both unique and common features that can complicate project success. The following barriers and observations are the combined experiences of the authors from working with our spectrum of collaborators.

Public understanding of libraries and archives is widely varied and not always accurate. Although it may feel remedial, especially in the case of taking on a large project, it is helpful to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of YOUR library or archives in a collaboration. Individuals may come in with a bias of having used a service such as newspapers.com for archival research or having visited a large governmental archive’s digital platform. A cultural heritage organization currently collaborating with VTUL, for example, recently asked for a list of people and general job duties responsible for maintaining the VTDL to convince their Director, when he would inevitably ask, that it was not possible for their team of three and free resources to create a self-managed archive with functionality equal to the VTDL. Conversely, they may understand the library as largely focused on physical material preservation and access, or understand access to be spreadsheets or shared files. In terms of available support, Purcell [1] recognizes that potential donors are unaware of the existing funding structures in the library, and often community collection work may appear as a free public service.

Digitization is considered the bulk of the work and the main component of preservation. Digitization is well-understood by many collaborators, and it is less challenging to convey digitization needs and how they impact digital preservation but is often perceived as constituting the bulk of the overall work. That is to say, adjustments must be made to establish where digitization falls in the workflow and what to expect as digital surrogates are produced, including a range of quality in file formats. University collaborators are especially susceptible to this notion that digitization is the end of their role in a project. Community collaborators are often members of cultural heritage organizations, historical societies, museums, and community archives and therefore have knowledge of metadata, but University collaborators tend to be outside of the professional archival scope.

The labor of creating minimally required item metadata and its role in accessibility and content organization is unanticipated. However, metadata is a discussion that necessitates foundational education on understanding what metadata means for an entire collection, its organization, and subsequent discoverability, accessibility, and preservability. Collaborators know that some description is needed, but even providing the minimally required metadata is daunting in terms of the unanticipated labor and complexities of metadata, particularly if metadata requirements are introduced beyond the development of the project. The labor can be at odds with the distinct need to be represented accurately and for the collection to be discoverable and searchable.

Collaborators may not fully consider a variety of types of researchers and how they would like to use the material. Collaborators approach libraries with the goal to “get everything online” but often do not consider how their primary audience will engage and interact with the material. This affects the initial collection organization and metadata structure, directly impacting how it is presented online; but explaining this to a collaborator takes time. It is helpful if they can role play as researchers or convey how they would use the materials internally. This can often be a good first step in establishing the necessary descriptive criteria and collection organization.

Understanding of rights is key for both parties. With a basic understanding of publicly available content and the role of the internet in facilitating access, stakeholders often underestimate the rights concerns overall. This could be surrounding the question of ownership and liability in publishing the material. It may also materialize as a lack of considerations around privacy or securing appropriate releases, especially in the case of audio-visual documentation including oral history work. A separate but related trend the authors experienced mirrors what Carbajal [2] refers to as the ethics in rights, and the fear that “forfeiture of ownership rights could infringe on the ability of a donor to continue receiving income from sales or royalties.”

Deadlines, research obligations, and the desire to have ‘results’ are primary academic drivers. Academic culture and grant work often include deadlines and a delineated beginning and end of research projects. This can affect the impact of the project and compromise all aspects from preservation to description and access. A result may need to be in the form of a deliverable product, such as a digital collection, but public accessibility of content alone does not equal a successful collaboration. The “lack of shared understanding” of what sustainability means for cultural collections that [10] describes can create misalignment in goals, leaving one or both parties with unfulfilled requirements by the “end” of a project.

Collecting policies versus the requirements of the collaborator can be at odds, and ultimately the best choice between VTUL access services is most dependent on the requirements of the collaborator.

Both parties need to be willing to learn, put work in, and compromise. Community groups are often composed of volunteers, who come to a project with different skill sets, understandings, motivations, and available time to commit to a project. They often have competing interests for the vision or a project. Information professionals can facilitate an understanding of the concepts of digital archives projects, and offer clarity where needed, but the organization needs to take initiative and involve parties willing to listen, learn, critique, compromise, and dedicate time.

In a high-level comparison, Fig. 1 depicts the authors’ understanding of the top curation priorities for each party, where they overlap, and where librarian, university, and community collaborators are most aligned. Many of these factors are shared to some extent by all parties, but clear priorities surface for each. The library prioritizes quality and technical components; university collaborators prioritize project management and research value; and community collaborators are concerned with rights and ownership. An interesting note was the lack of overlap between university and community collaborators, indicating distinct needs between the two.

Adjustments, Concessions, & Compromises

Deriving from the observations described earlier, VTUL has made and continues to make changes to workflows and support structures to scale and adapt for the projects VTUL serves. The following adjustments, concessions, and compromises are gleaned from the authors’ collective experiences working across a variety of stakeholders.

“Good” practices are better than no practices. Industry standards and best practices are not always attainable by all collaborators. As Hurley [3] generalizes, community archives in particular are “commonly considered the least prepared to undertake digital preservation activities” and have experienced a “rocky transition to digital

preservation.” The Library relies on the collaborator to fulfill their responsibilities prior to a successful ingest of materials, but this requires us to provide some leniency to allow for some “good” practices
rather than best practices to meet the required needs of both parties. The VTDL, for example, established a baseline for digital image quality (based on pixel dimensions that align with what a typical flatbed scanner would produce) and metadata (identifier, title, rights) to provide clear guidelines and lower the barrier for under-resourced collaborators.

Decision-making around resource allocation is a gap being addressed at VTUL. “Good” practices also apply to the Library’s responsibilities in a collaboration. VTUL cannot provide all of the services in-house to develop a robust collection for all collaborations and decisions are made by balancing the available resources for each party and allocating them as efficiently as possible.

Shifting to consultations from on-demand services is a compromise. The library has always provided consultations on many areas in digitization, metadata, documentation, and appraisal to a wide range of users as needed. VTUL provides services including boilerplate text for grants, consultation on data management plans, and help identifying tools and platforms. However, given the historical imbalance of resource allocation, the new strategy is front-ending the work by developing documentation, resources, and guides available to collaborators to perform curation activities themselves, and refining our internal workflows for a more streamlined process.

One size does not fit all, and the library must develop different versions of library resources to complement the project type. Rather than trying to fit each project type and collaboration into one or two set processes, DL&P has begun to create a range of resources designed to introduce digital library concepts and demonstrate what [11] describes as “bronze” (mandatory), “silver” (recommended), and “gold standard,” requires in terms of labor, time, all geared to show the range of digital collection quality that can be achieved.

Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) allow for transparency, agreement, and project documentation before the project begins. Much of our interaction with potential and current collaborators is discussion-based, but VTUL has started introducing more paperwork into the relationship, including an MOA. Our MOA6 is not legally binding but is approved by our University Legal department, and serves as a formal agreement on shared goals, roles and responsibilities, work to be performed by each party, and a timeline. The MOA allows the library to dedicate more time to negotiation and the dance of establishing relationships, getting materials, facilitating meetings, and building trust that is documented and agreed to by both parties. Formalizing transparency and working within defined scopes and responsibilities lends to trust-building and more efficient projects.

Saying “no” is a reasonable conclusion to prevent unnecessary work when priorities cannot align. Although it can be difficult to say and difficult to hear, the Library has had few instances where saying “no” is the best course of action. Some cases cannot come to a compromise or define shared goals, and some have clear misalignment with Library scope and the Library cannot commit to a project. On the collaborator side, there are also instances where the collaborator has declined to move forward based on the MOA, lack of a fit with VTUL services, or local resources/interest for the project were depleted.

Community Advisory Boards empower communities and establish a direct line of communication with the library. Building on the results of the grant described in the Scope Limitations section above, a Community Advisory Board for the newly-formed Greater Southwest Virginia Digital Collective (GSDC) has been successfully established. VTUL contracted Dr. Katherine Skinner, former Executive Director of the Educopia Institute and author of Community Cultivation - A Field Guide [13], for a series of sessions to guide the future Board in developing bylaws, mission, vision, and values, using [13] as a guide for ongoing development. The Board, composed of community and library representatives, provides a voice for the community collaborators to have an equitable dialogue with VTUL, allaying some of the tensions described in the Community Collaborations subsection above.

Establishing a collection manager for the collaborative team outside of VTUL is key to project success. A significant recommendation VTUL makes to our collaborators is for the collaborator to appoint an internal collection manager before beginning any digitization or metadata work. What this looks like to the collaborator might be different from how Libraries define a collection manager, but this person serves as the liaison and is the human intervention for managing their workflows, quality control, and primary communication with the Library. The authors have seen success in this strategy, as VTUL encourages early identification of a person for the collaborator to appoint who has the authority to make informed decisions and be willing to learn on behalf of the collaborator’s organization.

Conclusion

While these types of partnerships are typified by their need for adjustments, the identified hindrances are not likely to slow the Library’s continued push for these collaborations. The pace of growth in community outreach efforts, coupled with the scholarly interest in the wealth of culture in the region, will continue to drive collection development. This growth is not a certainty though, and as always in the cultural heritage and academic fields, attention should be paid to articulating the value of successful collaborative projects. Potential negatively impactful efforts include Virginia Tech’s push to global priorities. Though funding opportunities continue to emphasize local efforts, this global push could impact the resources used to support local and regional areas.

This growth can only be scaled up so much though before a key element of individual attention and care is lost. Adjustments, concessions, and compromises, are informed not only by technical needs but through a dialogue with community partners. As noted by Carbajal [2], “Archivists must recognize that donors need mechanisms and opportunities to engage directly and indirectly in archival decision-making.” Resource allocation and early consultation work to establish this trust and the kind of partnership that is desired or needed.

Recognizing the curation priorities of the involved parties is key to understanding both the overall vision and the basic technical needs. Group needs must be met, and the consultant-type model helps identify the needs early. This initial dance of negotiation between library and donor collaborations informs the nature of the ongoing relationship and future successes, facilitating trust building and increased digital collection preservation and sustainability.