Digital Curation: Survey of Freely Available Learning and Education Resources
Introduction:
With the overwhelming quantities of data being created over time increasing exponentially, the importance and necessity for developing standardized methodologies for managing, curating, and storing this “tsunami of information” for long-term preservation has become increasingly paramount (Haendel et al., 2021, p. 1). This need spurred the creation of the still relatively new field known as digital curation, having been first introduced in a 2001 meeting sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition and the British National Space Centre, with it being defined as centering on “maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use” (Beagrie, 2006) (Ray, 2013, p. 32).
While this field has made tremendous strides in the ensuing years through the establishment of its primer open access journal, The International Journal of Digital Curation in 2006, varying levels of integration into various university graduate level courses and programs, and being populated with numerous organizations, centers and communities that foster its development; it is still a field that is plagued with growing pains related to the dearth of adequate funding for further research and projects, as well as a wanting for further outreach to those with varying levels of awareness regarding the issues around this exponential growth in data that merits contemporary attention (Ray, 2013, p.33-34) (Poole, 2016, p. 974).
Since its inception, there has been a pronounced focus on the importance of collaboration and communities of practice as a means to evolve digital curation as a field and nourish new forms of scholarly communication (Poole, 2016, p. 966). Through this culture that prizes cross-continental communication and collaboration in order to foster an invisible college of likeminded individuals and organizations, tremendous progress has been made in the establishment of shared standards, common vocabularies, workflows, hardware, and software tools in service of digital curation, all in the face of common critiques regarding the then lacking amount of these factors from as late as the mid-2010s (Latham and Poe, 2012).
In order to further the spread of these tools, practices, and resources while expanding potential for cross-disciplinary cooperation, many organizations and centers have produced freely available learning resources for individuals interested in digital curation, with attention paid to making these resources able to serve the purposes of those seeking higher education or enable professional development for individuals with varying levels of awareness or knowledge related to digital curation or archival practices (Poole, 2013). What proceeds is a survey of many of these freely available education resources that are housed or linked to on 6 digital curation organizations websites.
Digital Preservation Management:
This website, produced by the Cornell University Library from 2003-2012, offers various freely available management tools for those in the digital preservation community. The paramount learning resource that it freely provides is its tutorial on the basics of digital preservation, providing an accessible entry point for those with no prior experience in this field with sections that elaborate on basic terms and concepts, issues of obsolescence that plague digital objects, foundational reference models like the Open Archival information System (OAIS), potential challenges (selection of assets, legal, financing, etc.), and technological issues (DPM). In addition to containing additional information regarding the management of digital preservation projects that are aimed more towards those with a background in digital preservation, this tutorial is considered to be an essential starting point for anyone in possession of varying levels of knowledge of digital curation, having been a recipient of the 2004 Society of American Archivists Preservation Publication Award (Oliver and Harvey, 2016, p. 94).
Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC):
The Digital Preservation Coalition (established in 2002) states that their organizational vision is to “secure our digital legacy” (DPC). Their stated objectives from their Strategic Plan for 2018-2022 indicate a focus on: Community engagement, advocacy, workforce development, capacity building, good practices and standards, management/governance, and scalability to the global scale of the challenges facing data management (DPC). While being a membership organization that houses various training modules for members, they additionally present various freely available training resources (Aus Preserves Ingest and Pre-Ingest Training Modules, Getting Started and Making Progress Training Modules) and case studies that aim to illustrate implementations of diverse workflows in practice, with the seemingly paramount resource that is provided is their Digital Preservation Handbook.
Initially compiled by Neil Beagrie and Maggie Jones in 2001, it is currently in its 2nd edition and is remarked as being kept up to date by the DPC, having “compiled [input] from 45 practitioners and experts in digital preservation”, this handbook is meant to “provide an internationally authoritative and practical guide to the subject of managing digital resources over time and the issues in sustaining access to them” (DPH). Touted as being intended for a wide audience that includes “those who are only beginning to consider managing digital materials to practitioners who have already accumulated considerable theoretical and/or practical experience,” and being formatted for ease of access to sections important to users (with links to external resources that are additionally grouped by publications, tools, web resources, videos/webinars, and case studies), this work provides an accessible framework that promotes education regarding digital curation. An additional boon is that the handbook is open, in that the creators allow and encourage its contents and illustrations to be integrated into other learning materials (so long as it is referenced) and further welcomes users to translate its contents into additional languages (currently available in English, French, and Italian) (DPH). While it remarks that it isn’t a catch-all for all things digital curation, this handbook is a highly thorough and a considerable learning resource.
International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC):
Formally chartered at the national Library of France in 2003 with 12 participating institutions, this consortium has since expanded its membership to span across 35 countries in order to foster the development of “best practices for selecting, harvesting, collecting, preserving, and providing access to Internet content”, “foster broad international coverage in web archive content through outreach and building curated collaborative collections”, developing “international advocacy for initiatives and legislation that encourages the collection and preservation of internet content”, and “encourage and facilitate research use of archived internet content” (IIPC). The IIPC encourages the sharing of knowledge regarding procedural, technological, and legal aspects of the preservation of born-digital content and other forms of data present on the internet. One of the noteworthy resources is their work with OpenWayback, an open-source version of the Wayback machine that can play back archived websites in browsers, with the open aspect being present as a means to amend the software in the face of the “ever-changing needs of the archiving community and of users” within the dynamic landscape of the internet (IIRC)
The website houses freely available training resources that include slide decks and speaker notes for 8 lessons that can be taught sequentially or as standalone modules depending on the goals of the facilitators. The target audience is assumed to have no prior knowledge of internet archiving practices while also being designed to address learning/training needs of those with varying experience with archival practices (practitioners, curators, new start professionals, policy makers/managers of various types of institutions). The IIRC presents these lessons as accessible means to teach what web archives are, their importance, how one can build the case for web archiving and related policies, and providing tools and skills necessary for basic web-archiving workflows (IIRC).
Additional free learning resources provided are links to case studies, collection development policies, and details regarding legal issues related to the curation of internet content (whether it be copyright or permission-related, there is even a section that details and links to country specific laws). While membership to the IIRC presents opportunities for funding for projects that further the development of internet archiving, the IIRC provides a robust quantity of free learning resources for those interested in the digital curation of internet content and the issues that surround it.
Digital Curation Centre (DCC):
The DCC was established in 2004 at the University of Edinburgh, and is considered to be “a world leader in creating guidance and resources on digital curation, [while] sponsoring professional training workshops, and publishing research through its [Open Access] International Journal of Digital Curation” (Ray, 33) (Poole, 2016, p. 969). In addition to hosting its “Delivering Research Data Management Services” MOOC (this year’s iteration being moderated by 6 experts from the DCC-UK and Dutch coalition “Research Data Netherlands”) to over 500 people from 90 countries, the DCC have a freely available Curation Reference Manual that contains “advice, in-depth information and criticisms on current digital curation techniques and best practices” (DCC).
This manual is touted as “an ongoing, community driven project, which involves members of the DCC community suggesting topics, authoring manual instalments and conducting peer reviews” (DCC). With 20 instalments that are readily available to “help data custodians, producers and users better understand the challenges they face and the roles that they play in creating, managing and preserving digital information over time,” with each topic having suggestions for best practices with real life examples of them in practice being presented as well (DCC). In order for this manual to remain relevant in the dynamic digital curation landscape, it undergoes “periodic reviews of the individual instalments and may commission updates where necessary to reflect any major developments in digital curation”, with their peer review panel that is composed of international digital curation experts that review each new installment (DCC).
Community Owned Digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR):
This website is “a wiki-based registry of digital preservation tools” that presently has entries on 546 tools and 14 digital curation workflows, where its main goal is to “help practitioners discover preservation tools that will help them tackle particular preservation challenges” (COPTR). Through the recognized need for a centralized consolidation of information about these tools that was initially spread across various corners of the internet, COPTR’s wiki framework enables anyone to create or amend entries regarding aspects like: licensing and cost, platform/interoperability, functionality notes, usability, required expertise, standards compliance, homepage links, and other descriptive aspects of the diverse tools and workflows available to serve digital curation practitioners and projects.
A prominent feature is its Tool Grid, which organizes tools by the lifecycle stage they address, function, content type, and file format (COPTR). This visualization enables users to search for information related to these criteria in hopes of providing the user with novel knowledge regarding tools and workflows that could have positive impacts on their efforts within this field. While this wiki assumes users have a more than basic knowledge and understanding of digital curation, it is still a remarkable learning resource regarding the tools and workflows that have been produced (often in an open fashion) that aid digital curation as a discipline and practice.
Preserving (Digital) Objects with Restricted Resources (POWRR):
This project was funded in 2012 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program as a means to investigate, evaluate and recommend “scalable, sustainable digital preservation solutions for libraries with smaller amounts of data and/or fewer resources”, with the additional goal of “[making] digital preservation more accessible to a wider range of cultural heritage professionals” (POWRR). In order to pursue this goal, POWRR provides numerous free educational resources, which include its Digital Preservation 101 (provides links to other free resources like the aforementioned DP Handbook, Digital Preservation Europe’s YouTube channel, to name a few), Digital POWRR webinar (contains 4 modules with accompanying video presentations that cover digital curation theory and practice; tools; triage of digital materials; advocacy and policy), links to free resources that detail methods for personal preservation (for example: preserving a user’s personal Facebook profile or archiving one’s Twitter posts), and a tool grid that mirrors the grid contained within the COPTR wiki (POWRR).
With these numerous resources presented on the POWRR website also being available or hosted on previously mentioned organization/center websites, the air of collaboration and communities of practice is palatable, with these organizations excising cooperative means to cross pollinate and build upon each other’s resources in order to further the education and development of tomorrow’s students and practitioners of digital curation in order to address the ever pressing challenges that the future holds.
References:
Beagrie, N. (2006), “Digital curation for science, digital libraries, and individuals”, International Journal of Digital Curation, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 3-16, available at: http://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/6/2
Beargie, N. and Jones, M. Digital Preservation Handbook (2021), Digital Preservation Coalition, available at: https://www.dpconline.org/handbook
Community Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR) web page (n.d.), available at: https://coptr.digipres.org/index.php/Main_Page/
Digital Curation Centre web page (n.d.), available at: https://www.dcc.ac.uk/
Digital Preservation Coalition web page (n.d.), available at: https://www.dpconline.org/
Digital Preservation Management web page (n.d), available at: https://dpworkshop.org/dpm-eng/
Haendel, M.A., Vasilevsky, N.A. and Wirz, J.A. (2012), “Dealing with data: a case study on information and data management literacy”, PLoS Biology, Vol. 10 No. 5, pp. 1-4.
International Internet Preservation Consortium web page. Available at: https://netpreserve.org/
Latham, B. and Poe, J.W. (2012), “The library as partner in university data curation: a case study in collaboration”, Journal of Web Librarianship, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 288-304.
Oliver, G., Harvey, R. (2016), “Sharing Knowledge and Collaboration” in Digital Curation, Second Edition, American Library Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 93-101.
Poole, A.H. (2013), “Now is the future now? The urgency of digital curation in the digital humanities”, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Vol. 7 Iss. 2, available at: http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/now-is-future-urgency-digital-curation-humanities/docview/2555207924/se-2/
Poole, A.H. (2016), “The conceptual landscape of digital curation”, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 72 No. 5, pp. 961-986.
Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources (POWRR) web page (n.d.), available at: https://digitalpowrr.niu.edu/
Ray, J. (2016), “Digital curation in museums”, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 32-39.
Tutorial (2003-2007), Digital Preservation Management web page, available at: https://dpworkshop.org/dpm- eng/eng_index.html