Thinking About Feedback

Drawing close to the publication of our first two training courses has me thinking about feedback. Not only in relation to which questions should we ask learners who take our courses, but also the feedback I’ve received over the years both on a personal level and for resources, projects and events I’ve helped deliver, and the importance of feedback for digital preservation work more generally. It’s an essential element of establishing good collaborative working practices, but also something that’s not always used to its full potential. With that in mind, I thought I’d spend a few minutes sharing some of my musings about feedback processes and the potential benefits and pitfalls.

On the surface feedback is about getting (hopefully constructive!) commentary on an event, service, or other resources that you’ve created, delivered, and/or shared with others. Gathering feedback in this way certainly helped with the development of the Novice to Know-How training courses. A pilot phase was incorporated into the creation of each course, resulting in changes to both content and delivery. Actioning feedback recommendations was also an essential component of updates of the original N2KH: Digital Preservation for Beginners course in 2024. The courses are undoubtedly better due to the feedback received from the community.

As an extension of this, feedback can also be about opening a dialogue between creator and consumer and encouraging people to have a greater connection with and ownership of the resources they use. Collaborative curriculum development and co-design of resources by educators and students is an increasing trend in the world of learning, and positive impacts include increased engagement and knowledge retention. I think there are lessons here that we, as digital preservation practitioners, can learn from and bring to our work. Particularly, how we can utilize the gathering of feedback as a way to advocate for our work through engagement with stakeholders.

Identifying and understanding stakeholders for digital preservation is a central element of our new course, Developing Digital Preservation Strategy and it suggests several points through the process when practitioners should look to discuss issues with key stakeholders, working collaboratively and seeking feedback. Opening up conversations about digital preservation is a great way to encourage engagement and buy-in from others. This could be through individual meetings to discuss important issues (such as a stage of strategy development) or by creating a standing body like a digital preservation working group with cross-organization participation. You could also seek feedback on a particular output, including some advocacy and education by stealth, e.g. asking for IT colleagues’ feedback on storage planning, incorporating some information sharing on digital preservation storage requirements into the process.

As many digital preservation practitioners either work alone or in small teams, encouraging colleagues from other teams and departments to engage with the topic through a feedback and discussion exercise can be an important step in establishing potential for collaborative working. It can also bring fresh perspectives to the challenges we face, by drawing on people with different knowledge, skills and experiences. There are countless studies that show how bringing diverse voices to the table increases innovation and delivery against goals, and for a complex topic like digital preservation this can be crucial to making progress. Our thinking can also stagnate if we are siloed, and we’ll fail to make the most of potential opportunities.

Finally, while I do think feedback is essential and underutilized, it’s also important to acknowledge that not all comments received are helpful and that we need to know when to take comments on board and when not to. This is something I’ve struggled with a lot in the past, particularly in relation to feedback on the more negative end of the scale. Many autistic people like me struggle with rejection sensitivity, meaning we can have a particularly strong emotional, and even physical, reactions to any comments we perceive to be negative. This has led to times when receiving feedback has been really difficult for me and I’ve often experienced fear ahead of reviewing results from a feedback survey, causing me to put off reading the outcomes.

To help curb the fear and to identify if the feedback actually falls into the category of “helpful” I now work through the following questions:

• Did I ask for and/or do I need the feedback?
• Is it from someone who is knowledgeable about the subject at hand?
• Is it constructive and/or actionable?
• Is it delivered in a respectful manner?
• Is it coming at the right time?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then it is probably not helpful at this point in time and should either be put aside until it would be or, in rarer cases, it should be disregarded entirely. Also, to remind me of the need for balance and objectivity when receiving feedback, I made one of my favourite “bad” feedback quotes into a cross-stitch sampler that sits on my office desk. Instead of getting me down, it now makes me smile whenever I see it!

So, in summary, feedback is an important, if underutilized, element of digital preservation work. It can encourage engagement with and understanding of digital preservation and help build the foundations for collaborative working and information sharing. It can also aid us in looking at challenges from new perspectives we might not have considered before. That being said, it is also essential to remember that not every comment received is a diamond, and we should act on what is helpful and (try to) let go what is not.

And now it’s time for me to go finish the feedback form for our training courses, we’re looking forward to hearing what you think!