UMSI assistant professor Rebecca Frank elected to National Digital Stewardship Alliance Coordinating Committee

University of Michigan School of Information assistant professor Rebecca Frank has been elected to the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Coordinating Committee. 

The NDSA is a national body that brings together almost 300 member organizations representing the digital preservation, curation and data repository community. It provides leadership and guidance to libraries, archives, universities and nonprofit institutions working to ensure the long-term accessibility and authenticity of digital information. 

Frank is an expert in how institutions preserve, evaluate and sustain digital information over time. Her research examines how organizations and professionals manage the risks, trust and ethics of digital preservation. She says the new role reflects her scholarship and longstanding relationship with the NDSA community. 

“My research is about digital preservation and curation and the organizations and people that do that work,” Frank says. “It’s really meaningful to have the opportunity to give back to a community of people who have been such enthusiastic participants in my work.” 

With her new role, Frank will help guide NDSA initiatives such as approving new member applications, developing publications, coordinating with partner organizations and contributing to advocacy and outreach efforts. 

Her election into the NDSA comes at a critical time for digital preservation as researchers and practitioners confront the growing challenge of disappearing online information from government websites, or datasets that are altered without record. 

“There’s an urgent need to capture information before it disappears, but also before it changes,” she says. “Repositories like the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at U-M and organizations like the NDSA play a vital role in preserving information in trustworthy, reliable ways so that its authenticity can be evaluated over time.” 

Franks says her new role is both a professional commitment and an opportunity to strengthen ties between research and practice in the field of digital stewardship. 

“Part of my role at UMSI as a digital curation scholar and educator is to make sure we’re connected with organizations like NDSA,” she says. “That’s how we ensure our research continues to support and strengthen the communities that make digital preservation possible.”

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Learn more about UMSI assistant professor Rebecca Frank by visiting her UMSI faculty profile.