Advocacy Case Studies

Tool tip: Use these examples as inspiration for advocacy activities you might undertake in your organization and develop your plans using the  Advocacy Action Plan.

University Archive

Stakeholder: IT team

Goal: To build relationships and strengthen collaboration on digital preservation.

Ask: No specific ask at this stage.

Message and/or Method: Knowing that the IT team had key responsibilities around disaster planning and storage, I began by meeting an IT colleague informally for coffee. This conversation opened the door to coordinating disaster planning activities between IT and the archive. It also led to my joining a regular IT‑led Community of Practice meeting, where I could begin raising awareness of digital preservation needs.

Outcome: These early engagements resulted in an invitation to join a newly formed IT storage working group. This provided a valuable opportunity to ensure digital preservation was included on their agenda and to further embed awareness of the requirements for effective digital preservation.

National Museum

Stakeholders: Museum staff across departments and levels of seniority, as well as IT colleagues and, eventually, senior decision-makers.

Goal: Initially, to understand how the organization worked and how digital assets featured in day-to-day practice. More broadly, to build awareness of digital preservation as a relevant institutional issue and establish a foundation for future change.

Ask: At first, the “ask” was very small: time to talk, openness about current working practices, and a willingness to share problems and frustrations. Later, the ask became broader support for a digital preservation roadmap and engagement with the actions arising from it.

Message: Digital preservation matters because digital material is already embedded in everyday museum work, often in fragile, unsupported, or poorly understood ways. It is not a specialist concern at the margins; it is a practical organizational issue that affects risk, access, efficiency, and long-term stewardship.

Method: Informal one-to-one conversations, usually at staff desks, observation of working environments and practices, note-taking, problem-solving where possible, relationship-building, followed by synthesis into a strategic roadmap and a staff presentation of findings.

Outcome: A much clearer picture of digital practice and risk across the Museum; strong cross-organizational relationships; increased trust and visibility for digital preservation work; practical goodwill built through solving immediate problems; an extensive digital preservation roadmap; sign-off from the Head of IT on major elements; and a stronger understanding that organizational maturity-building, training, and advocacy are needed to come before large-scale technological solutions.

Museum

Stakeholders: This advocacy activity focused on all museum staff, including public‑facing teams, record creators, and colleagues responsible for communications and engagement.

Goal: To increase organizational awareness of the museum’s born‑digital collections, and to help staff understand how these collections can support public‑facing work (talks, exhibitions, social media, and outreach), and good record‑keeping practice within the museum.

Ask: For staff to actively share and promote born‑digital collections through their work and channels, and for creators to transfer digital records to the archive in line with the museum’s retention schedule.

Message: The museum holds born‑digital collections that can be used to support research, talks, and other public‑facing activities. These collections are accessible to the public via the museum’s public access platform, enabling research beyond the organization. For record creators, transferring digital records in line with the retention schedule helps ensure content is preserved, discoverable, and reusable in the future.

These messages addressed the key motivators: Discoverability and efficiency - Making it easier for staff to find and reuse existing digital content for talks and public engagement. Value and visibility - Demonstrating that born‑digital collections are a usable, accessible asset—not just an archival responsibility. Accountability and good governance - Reinforcing the importance of timely transfer of digital records to support long‑term access and reuse.

Method: Messages were delivered through all‑staff communications by way of regular updates included in the all‑staff memo which was circulated by the CEO, lending institutional visibility and legitimacy to the message, as well as through informal engagement and drop‑in sessions for staff to learn about the public access platform and explore the types of born‑digital content available. Highlighting specific examples of relevant content was used for targeted engagement with key teams. For example, sharing digital advertising material relating to Pricing in Proportion (introduced 20 years ago) with the social media team to demonstrate direct reuse potential.

Outcomes and reflection: While tangible outcomes were difficult to measure, staff feedback on the public access platform was positive, indicating improved understanding and interest. The activity demonstrated that advocacy aimed at internal audiences can be effective when it is practical, example‑led, and embedded into existing communication channels, and that informal engagement opportunities can lower barriers for staff unfamiliar with born‑digital content and preservation concepts.

University Library

Stakeholders: Senior Leadership in Information Services (IS)

Goal: The archive currently exists as a series of at-risk formats. As staff leave, systems are decommissioned, and organisational structures evolve, the context and knowledge required to interpret these records is steadily disappearing. The teams who created this content do not have the time, tools, or specialist expertise needed to ensure its long-term preservation and accessibility. Without dedicated resource, material will remain vulnerable and ultimately be lost. The goal therefore, was to specifically preserve, make accessible and showcase a discrete collection of internal IT Newsletters, while using this as a catalyst to: 

• Raise awareness of digital preservation across IS

• Demonstrate the long-term value of effective information management 

• Build sustained support for digital preservation practices within IS 

Ask: 1) funding for an intern (1.5 years) to support the curation and processing of the IT Newsletter archive, 2) buy-in from IS teams represented in the IT Newsletter archive to support digital preservation 

Message: The relevance of the IT Newsletter archive, and the fact that it demonstrates the long history of the University IT teams in supporting the development of computing and AI in Scotland since the 1970s, was used to capture the attention of IS. Digital preservation was framed as the solution for safeguarding this valuable collection, without which we would lose the record of that work and those people. 

Method: As part of the student internship, an exhibition and engagement campaign was launched which showcased the collection and emphasised that without dedicated resource (the intern), these important records would have been lost.

Outcome: The creation of a fully preserved and (mostly) accessible archive of the IT Newsletter collection and its launch was an opportunity for the Chief Information Officer and Chief Librarian to observe a relevant outcome of digital preservation. At the launch they remarked on having learned about digital preservation, after which advocacy in IS spaces has become much easier. This has resulted in the adoption of a new digital preservation policy with new University-wide scope by Information Services Senior Leadership Team. 

Art Gallery

Stakeholders: Teams and heads of departments that are required to be involved in the care of web-based art in the collection, namely Technology, Digital, Conservation, Registrars, Curatorial departments.

Goal: Convene all the stakeholders to agree the acquisition and display processes for web-based artworks, a new type of artwork in the collection. Web-based art is a challenge because it requires teams that may not typically be involved in the preservation of artworks.

Ask: Describe and agree workflows needed to support the acquisition and display of web-based artworks, ensure the inclusion of all departments and identify resource needs.

Message: Web-based art is Art, and it needs all teams to collaborate to be preserved to enable the same levels of visibility and access.

Method: 3-day inter-departmental workshop bringing together external experts to inform the different teams of the options for preservation, as well as the specificities of web-based art. The fact that it was both a working meeting but also included a degree of training and Q&A made it more engaging and ensured the attendance of colleagues from across teams.

Outcome: Defining of workflows and clarification of roles for web-based art preservation and display, presented as a document agreed by all stakeholders. The meeting highlighted that contributions from different teams are essential for the collection and preservation of web-based art. It contributed to the development of new relationships across teams, as well as increased visibility and recognition of web-based art.