Digital Curation for Science, Digital Libraries, and Individuals

Abstract

The creation, management and use of digital materials are of increasing importance for a wide range of activities. Much of the knowledge base and intellectual assets of institutions and individuals are now in digital form. The term digital curation is increasingly being used for the actions needed to add value to and maintain these digital assets over time for current and future generations of users. The paper explores this emerging field of digital curation as an area of inter-disciplinary research and practice, and the trends which are influencing its development. It analyses the genesis of the term and how traditional roles relating to digital assets are in transition. Finally it explores some of the drivers for curation ranging from trends such as exponential growth in digital information, to "life-caching", digital preservation, the Grid and new opportunities for publishing, sharing, and re-using data. It concludes that significant effort needs to be put into developing a persistent information infrastructure for digital materials and into developing the digital curation skills of researchers and information professionals. Without this, current investment in digitisation and digital content will only secure short-term rather than lasting benefits.

A study of digital curator competences: A survey of experts

“…The topic digital curation can be considered still in infancy stage (Beagrie, 2006) This chapter is set out in four sections. First, an overview of "Digital curation" is presented.…”

“…Several authors from Library and Information Science, Archival and Records Management, Computer Science fields have discussed the development and the nature of the concept of Digital curation in general, for example Beagrie (2006), Yakel (2007, Williams (2009), Ray (2009), Duranti (2006, Harvey (2010), Cunningham (2008) and MacDonald and Lird (2003).…”

“…The term "digital curation" which is becoming an umbrella term with "data curation", "digital preservation", "electronic records management", and "digital archiving" (Yakel, 2007;Ray 2009;Beagrie, 2006) became popular yet controversial. One of the controversy is whether "digital curation" is an upgraded version of "digital preservation" or "digital archiving" (Harvey, 2010;Cunningham, 2008).…”

Curadoria digital: proposta de um modelo para curadoria digital em ambientes big data baseado numa abordagem semi-automática para a seleção de objetos digitais

“…Conforme afirma Beagrie (2006), os desafios de instituições como bibliotecas e arquivos -que precisam pensar em séculos à frente -, na verdade acabam por se manifestar, num mundo digital, em uma década ou menos. Questões similares acabam por afetar igualmente as organizações de maneira geral.…”

Toward a Reference Architecture for Archival Systems

“…Although most of this information is for immediate consumption, many organizations have an interest in long-term preservation [1]. The main motivations for preserving information are reusing existing knowledge, or keeping proofs of past events.…”