Nominations are now being accepted for the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) 2021 Excellence Awards!

The annual NDSA award program was first established in 2012 as the Innovation Awards to recognize and encourage exemplary achievement in the field of digital preservation stewardship. Beginning in 2021, the awards were renamed as the Excellence Awards to highlight and commend all forms of creative and meaningful contributions by individuals, projects, sustainability activities, organizations, future stewards, and educators to the field of digital preservation. These awards focus on recognizing excellence in the following areas:

• Educator Award: Recognizing academics, trainers, and curricular endeavors promoting effective and inventive approaches to digital preservation education through academic programs, partnerships, professional development opportunities, and curriculum development.
• Future Steward Award: Recognizing students and early-career professionals making an impact on advancing knowledge and practice of digital preservation stewardship.
• Individual Award: Recognizing those individuals making a significant contribution to the digital preservation community through advances in theory or practice.
• Organization Award: Recognizing those organizations providing support, guidance, advocacy, or leadership for the digital preservation community.
• Project Award: Recognizing those activities whose goals or outcomes make a significant contribution or strategic or conceptual understanding necessary for successful digital preservation stewardship.
• Sustainability Award: Recognizing those activities whose goals or outcomes make a significant contribution to operational trustworthiness, monitoring, maintenance, or intervention necessary for sustainable digital preservation stewardship.

As a diverse international membership organization with a shared commitment to digital preservation, the NDSA understands the importance of developing and supporting a broad range of successful digital preservation activities. Acknowledging that exemplary digital stewardship can take many forms, eligibility for these awards has been left purposely broad. Anyone or any project or institution acting in the context of the above categories can be nominated for an award. Nominees do not have to be NDSA member institutions or individuals or project staff affiliated with member institutions, but must evidence engagement with the theory and practice of long-term digital preservation stewardship. Nominators similarly do not need to be affiliated with NDSA member institutions. Self-nomination is accepted and encouraged, as are submissions reflecting the needs and accomplishments of historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Nominations will be accepted until Friday, July 30, 2021.

In past years, prizes have been presented during the NDSA’s annual Digital Preservation conference Given ongoing travel restrictions, this year's event will again take place in virtual form, on Nov. 4, 2021. Attendance at the conference is encouraged but not required for awardees or nominators. 

In these troubled times, it is especially important to take the time to recognize and laud exemplary activity. We encourage all members of the international digital preservation community to help us highlight and reward distinctive approaches to the challenges of digital preservation by submitting nominations for worthy candidates at: https://forms.gle/ZXqLaGuqeUyHhTwp9. 

For more information on the details on awards from previous years, please visit https://ndsa.org/groups/excellence-awards/. Please feel free to pass along this announcement to colleagues.

NDSA Innovation Awards Working Group: