Many institutions collect the papers of prominent artists, but similar efforts have rarely extended to the archives of self-taught artists and artists of local renown. The author recommends that institutions establish collaborative relationships with local artists, supporting these artists' personal archiving efforts with guidance and resources, and providing an archival repository for long-term community access to these materials. This article presents a case study of such a relationship between Durham-based painter Cornelio Campos and the Durham County Library. The author analyzes this effort to articulate a general framework for establishing strong relationships between local artists and cultural heritage institutions.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the preservation practices of new media artists, in particular those working outside of the scope of major collecting institutions, examining how these artists preserve new media artworks in their custody. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds case studies of seven new media artists of differing practices and artistic approaches. For each case study, semi-structured interviews with the artists were conducted in conjunction with visits to the artists’ studios. Findings The study finds that new media artists face a number of shared preservation challenges and employ a range of preservation strategies, and that these challenges and strategies differ markedly from that of art museums and cultural heritage institutions. Research limitations/implications This study considers preservation practices for new media artists generally. Further research into specific communities of artistic practice could profitably build upon this overall framework. Practical implications The findings of this research pose a number of implications for art museums and cultural heritage institutions, suggesting new ways these institutions might consider supporting the preservation of new media artworks before works enter into institutional custody. Originality/value The literature on new media art preservation emphasizes the importance of working with artists early in the life cycle of digital artworks. This study advances this by investigating preservation from the perspective of new media artists, deepening the understanding of challenges and potential preservation strategies for these artworks prior to entering or outside of institutional custody.

Abstract:The paper provides a review of published literature on the collection and development of Web archives, focusing specifically on the theories, techniques, tools, and approaches used to appraise Web-based materials for inclusion in collections. Facing an enormous amount of Web-based materials, archival institutions and other cultural heritage institutions need to devise methods to actively select Webpages for preservation, creating Web archives that constitute a cultural record of the Web for the benefit of users. This review outlines the challenges of collecting and appraising Web-based materials, places the theories and activities of collecting Web-based materials within the broader discourse of archival appraisal, and points out directions for future research and critical discourse for Web archives.

This paper describes and compares digital curation workflows from 12 cultural heritage institutions that vary in size, nature of digital collections, available resources, and level of development of digital curation activities. While the research and practice of digital curation continues to mature in the cultural heritage sector, relatively little empirical, comparative research on digital curation activities has been conducted to date. The present research aims to advance knowledge about digital curation as it is currently practiced in the field, principally by modeling digital curation workflows from different institutional contexts. This greater understanding can contribute to the advancement of digital curation software, practices, and technical skills. In particular, the project focuses on the role of open-source software systems, as these systems already have strong support in the cultural heritage sector and can readily be further developed through these existing communities. This research has surfaced similarities and differences in digital curation activities, as well as broader sociotechnical factors impacting digital curation work, including the degree of formalization of digital curation activities, the nature of collections being acquired, and the level of institutional support for various software environments.

Artists have long engaged with digital and networked technologies in critical and creative ways to explore both new art forms and novel ways of disseminating artworks. Net-based artworks are often created with the intent to circulate outside traditional institutional spaces, and many are shared via artist-run platforms that involve curatorial practices distinct from those of museums or commercial galleries. This article focuses on a particular artist-run platform called Paper-Thin, characterizing the activities involved in managing the platform as digital curation in a polysemous sense – as both the curation of digital artworks and the stewardship of digital information in a complex technological ecosystem. While scholars and cultural heritage professionals have developed innovative preservation strategies for digital and new media artworks housed in institutional collections, the ongoing care of artworks shared through networked alternative spaces is largely carried out co-operatively by the artists and curators of these platforms. Drawing on Howard Becker’s sociological theory of art worlds as networks of co-operative actors, this article describes the patterns of co-operative work involved in creating, exhibiting, and then caring for Net-based art. The article outlines the importance, for cultural heritage professionals, of understanding the digital-curation practices of artists, as these artist-run networked platforms demonstrate emergent approaches to the stewardship of digital culture that move beyond a custodial paradigm.