 Welcome, everyone. My name is Lauren work and I'm here with my co chair and colleague Elizabeth England to present the findings of the 2021 and the essay staffing survey. So a bit of background about the staffing survey. This is the third iteration of the survey and subsequent report with the first two being completed and 2020 and 2012 and 2017. The overall goal of the survey is to both examine current digital preservation staffing levels and needs, as well as to review these changes over time. So in 2021, a new working group was formed to develop and conduct this current iteration of the staffing survey and report. In doing so, we took the opportunity to significantly revise the survey based on an examination of past results and recommendations from prior working groups, as well as to keep current with the changing landscape of digital preservation work and staffing. One of the most significant changes we made to the survey itself was to ask for individual rather than organizational responses. And the shift allowed us to both ask for the first time for more detailed demographic information such as income and gender, as well as allow us to collect more discrete individual responses, as well as multiple responses from individuals within a single organization. Finally, this approach still allowed us to maintain longitudinal data across surveys, as we retained and modified some similar questions to those asked in 2012 and 2017. And all of this work was only made possible by a fantastic working group team. Elizabeth England and myself had the privilege of co-chairing the group, while the additional people on the team are all listed on the slide here and made significant contributions to the survey redesign, data collection analysis, and report writing for the survey. And additionally, a special thanks goes to the digital preservation community as well, who took the time to fill out the survey and share their thoughts and experiences with us. So, once our survey review and redesign was complete, it was open to the community during the months of November and December of 2021. The survey and subsequent report covered five main sections. These were background information, which includes the demographic information I mentioned. Digital preservation activities and planning, digital preservation organization and staffing, staffing qualifications and training, and final thoughts about program staffing and organization. And this consisted of two free text questions. We received 269 responses from individuals with 16 countries represented in the data. 65% of respondents were from the United States. 63% of respondents worked in academic libraries or archives, and 66% of respondents identify as women. So one of the questions asked in the background section shown here is Q7. Asked respondents to select the option that best describes their position within the organization. This was a required question in the survey, and the choices were from left to right on the screen here. A senior level administrator or executive with strategic or financial oversight of digital preservation. Someone whose principal responsibility is coordinating digital preservation on an organization wide basis. Who contributes to developing digital preservation guidelines, activities and workflows. And someone who performs specific digital preservation activities. We asked this question because we really wanted to understand how one's position within an organization as related to digital preservation might affect their view and also relate to other survey questions. So as demonstrated here, the question proved really useful in interpreting and analyzing survey results. So what you're seeing here on the screen is where we took answers related to positionality and cross reference them with answers that respondents gave to question 13, which asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement. Digital preservation is a high priority for my organization. It's on a scale of strongly disagree to agree, which you can see along the bottom with the x axis, and the position and role answers are along the horizontal or y axis. So those in the roles of senior administrator executor, executive, and those who coordinated digital preservation, generally tend to have more positive outlooks. So agreeing or strongly agreeing that digital preservation is a priority. And you can see that going into the blue. Those who are likely to have less organizational power and positionality in the other two roles, you can see are more into the red on the screen here. And generally throughout the survey, those perceived to have more organizational power. So those two roles of the senior administrator, executive, and those who coordinate digital preservation, they tended to have more positive outlooks. So this is a follow up question to that previous question about digital preservation prioritization and as respondents who had disagreed or strongly disagreed to explain why they felt that digital preservation was not a high priority at their organization. And we did this throughout the survey with some different questions to get a more nuanced understanding of why people tended to agree or disagree with questions, mostly in the disagree to strongly disagree realm. So the issues around prioritization and senior level support are part of this list. And you can see in diminishing numbers. So starting with too many competing priorities with 89%. Followed by insufficient senior administrator or executive understanding digital preservation. Now things like lack of expertise on staff tend to fall near the bottoms. You can see that at 45% or so. This is just one example of a follow up question that also relates to positionality that we are interested in examining. Q 16 prompted respondents to describe how individuals committees and or departments handle digital preservation responsibilities. For 37% of respondents, there are multiple individuals at their organization whose work entails some digital preservation activities, but their work is not coordinated on an organization wide basis. In these scenarios that encompass some level of organizational coordination, 26% of respondents noted that one person is responsible for digital preservation in their organization. When comparing this question with Q 14, which asked respondents to indicate whether or not they agreed or disagreed with the following statement. The organization has the digital preservation policies needed to manage the content we steward respondents who reported some level of organizational coordination were more likely to agree or strongly agree that they have the policies needed. The data showed a connection between coordinated organizational efforts and strong digital preservation policies. A major area of focus for the survey was about staffing levels. All of the four position types are perceived as understaffed, although the extent of staffing gaps varies by position type. When survey respondents were asked about the current and ideal staffing numbers for the four roles outlined in the survey, the most enthusiasm for growth was around the role of someone who performs specific digital preservation activities. And the median change was plus two. The other roles median desire change was plus one with the administrator slash executive role median desire changed at zero. Based on this current version of the report, people are not asking for huge staffing number increases. But what this report tells us is that it is clear that staff need to be actually dedicated and supported both fiscally and organizationally to primarily do the work of digital preservation with decision making power and authority. Respondents with at least one senior administrator or executive with digital preservation oversight reported higher levels of coordinated decision making than those with no one in this role. Those who reported no senior administrator or executive with digital preservation oversight were more than twice as likely to indicate that there is ad hoc decision making at their organization as compared to a coordinated approach across their organization. Next slide. This question about skills and abilities was modified from the previous surveys to broaden the focus to important skills and abilities for all staff within an organization, not just new hires. Each skill or ability could be ranked as essential desirable not important or not applicable of the options provided five were rated as either essential or desirable by 97% or more of respondents. Those five are communication skills, analytical skills, collaboration skills, developing and implementing workflows and general IT literacy. Other skills such as collaboration. Um, sorry, the only options that weren't selected as either essential or desirable by at least 75% of respondents were managing continued improvement maturity modeling or certification and managing budgets. Next slide. Comparing the results of the skills question to Q seven, the four position types question differences of opinion about the most important skills or abilities emerge. Interestingly, collaboration was chosen as either the number one or number two most essential skill by all position types, except by senior level administrators or executives. All four position types recognized communication as an essential skill. Developing and implementing workflows was also a commonly recognized skill across positions. Next slide. One of the clearest trends throughout the survey was how perceptions of digital preservation shifted according to respondents roles within their organizations. These included significant differences in what are considered important skills for digital preservation staff respondents access to training and resources for digital preservation. And the perception of how well or if digital preservation is prioritized. Senior level leadership had the most favorable views of their digital preservation programs. This stands in stark contrast with responses throughout the survey that highlighted a lack of leadership positions advocating for prioritizing and demonstrating an understanding of digital preservation. There is a clear disconnect between those engaged in the routine work of digital preservation and those in senior level roles responsible for strategic and or financial oversight. This image here shows the six agreement level scale questions that were asked in the survey. And you can see that overall having staffing needed to manage content is the greatest need. So some additional conclusions as just stated the need to hire more staff was a substantial trend that emerged across the survey responses. But increasing the number of staff may only be part of the approach for building effective and sustainable digital preservation programs. Staff dedicated to digital preservation organizational placement of digital preservation roles and adequate decision making authority within those roles are also important. Generally responses indicated support for technology and infrastructure related to digital preservation needs, though respondents did note some room for improvement in these areas as well. And again, respondents have emphasized the importance of providing staff with necessary resources, the time, funding and opportunities to allow them to collaborate, participate in training and develop skills to sustainably staff, maintain and grow digital preservation programs. The 2021 staffing survey report, as well as the codebook anonymized raw data, list of job titles of respondents and files necessary for reproducing the data visualizations are available in the NDSA open science framework or OSF. The URL is available here. If you have any questions, please feel free to send an email to ndsa.digipres at gmail.com. Thank you.