Reflections on Mental Health and Wellbeing in a Changing Digital Preservation Landscape
Sharon McMeekin, Preserve Together
NDSA Digital Preservation 2025 Conference Session 1B2
In March 2025, the Digital Preservation Coalition released a report, authored by Sharon McMeekin, that summarized the findings from a 2023 survey on Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Digital Preservation Community. The report details the high levels of stress, anxiety, and fatigue experienced by practitioners, the importance of organizational culture on mental health and wellbeing, the negative impact that the lack of support for and engagement with digital preservation is having, and the issues that exist relating to unclear roles and responsibilities and unmanageable workloads.
In the two years since the circulation of the survey, the context in which many digital preservation practitioners are operating has deteriorated due to unstable political climates and eroding funding streams. The first half of this presentation will aim to provide a brief summary of the main findings of the report and place them in relation to the current context of the evolving political, economic, and social landscape of digital preservation.
The second half of the presentation will then look to the future, discussing how we might begin to prioritise the challenges we face, how we can build recognition of the difference between what we could do and what we should do, and how we might work collaboratively through organizations like NDSA to support each other through difficult times.