The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has launched a new online training course aimed at helping digital preservation professionals make the case for their work within their organisations as they face resource pressures and mounting digital preservation challenges.
The new course, N2KH: Advocacy, is designed to support digital preservation professionals in communicating the value of their work and building support within their organisations, and is the latest addition to the Novice to Know-How (N2KH) online learning pathway.
The course became available on 22 April 2026 and was conceived and funded by The National Archives (UK) and delivered by the DPC. It introduces a practical approach to advocating for digital preservation, and forms part of a broader suite of free training resources aimed at the archives and information management community.
The Novice to Know-How pathway
Part of The National Archives' digital capacity building strategy, 'Plugged In, Powered Up', the Novice to Know-How learning pathway aims to provide learners with the skills required to develop and implement digital preservation workflows within their organisation.
All content has been researched, developed, and tested by practitioners within the digital preservation community, and the courses are freely accessible to anyone. Previous modules in the pathway have covered foundational digital preservation skills, email preservation, building a digital asset register, and providing access to preserved digital content.
Among the learning outcomes for the new advocacy course, learners will be able to acknowledge and manage the emotional challenges of advocacy, recognising that these feelings are normal and widely shared. Digital preservation can struggle to compete for resources against more visible service pressures and the new course aims to address this gap by equipping practitioners to communicate the risks of inadequate digital preservation and to build a compelling internal case for action.
The DPC's Rapid Assessment Model (RAM) can also support internal advocacy and strategic planning, with the DPC encouraging all organisations to use the tool annually to benchmark their digital preservation maturity.
The course is freely available to all via the DPC's online learning portal. Learners from the UK archives sector or DPC members are given priority places. Organisations with their own learning management systems can also request copies of the course content for internal upload under a Creative Commons licence, which the DPC notes has proved useful for staff development and information management training programmes.
Further information is available at dpconline.org.
