Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages

E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records. This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.

Comparison of Strategies and Policies for Building Distributed Digital Preservation Infrastructure: Initial Findings from the MetaArchive Cooperative

This paper discusses the importance of a particular approach to building and sustaining digital content preservation infrastructures for cultural memory organizations (CMOs), namely distributed approaches that are cooperatively maintained by CMOs (rather than centralized approaches managed by agencies external to CMOs), and why this approach may fill a gap in capabilities for those CMOs actively digitizing historical and cultural content (rather than scientific data). Initial findings are presented from an early organizational effort (the MetaArchive Cooperative) that seeks to fill this gap for CMOs. The paper situates these claims in the larger context of selected exemplars of Digital Preservation (DP) efforts in both the United States and the United Kingdom that are seeking to develop effective DP models in an attempt to recognize those organizational aspects (such as the governmental frameworks, cultural backgrounds, and other differences in emphasis) that are UK- and US-specific1.This paper is based on the paper given by the author at the 4th International Digital Curation Conference, December 2008; received July 2008, published October 2009.The International Journal of Digital Curation is an international journal committed to scholarly excellence and dedicated to the advancement of digital curation across a wide range of sectors. ISSN: 1746-8256 The IJDC is published by UKOLN at the University of Bath and is a publication of the Digital Curation Centre

Digital Storytelling and History Lines: Community Engagement in a Master-Planned Development

The introduction of new media and information and communication technology enables a greater variety of formats and content beyond conventional texts in the application and discourse of public history projects. Multimedia and personalised content requires public historians and cultural community developers to grasp new skills and methods to make representations of and contributions to a collective community memory visible. This paper explores the challenge of broadening and reinvigorating the traditional role of the public historian working with communities via the facilitation, curation and mediation of digital content in order to foster creative expression in a residential urban development. It seeks to better understand the role of locally produced and locally relevant content, such as personal and community images and narratives, in the establishment of meaningful social networks of urban residents. The paper discusses the use of digital storytelling and outlines the development of a new community engagement application we call History Lines

'It's like the space shuttle blows up every day':Digital television heritage as memory of European crises in the age of information overload

Television is a public mediator of what constitutes 'crises' in Europe. Audio-visual archives and researchers are facing new complexities and 'information bubbles' when telling stories and reusing televised materials. I reflect on these practices, among others, via a comparative case analysis of the EUscreen portal offering access to thousands of items of European audio-visual heritage. I question how practices of selection and curation can support comparative interpretations of such representations. This approach aims to understand and support (1) interpretations of digitized/digital audio-visual sources in the era of information overload; (2) user interaction with digital search technologies - especially researchers as platform users; and (3) contextualization for reuse of audio-visual texts. Support for cultural memory research is crucial as television's audio-visual heritage can help us to recognize which cultural practices result in the production of specific texts in European societies, representing conditions of the multiple crises that European citizens are experiencing today

Projetos de curadoria digital: um relato de experiências.

Objective. Report experiences of applying the lifecycle stages of digital curation to four collections at LIBER Laboratory (Knowledge Technology Laboratory) of Federal University of Pernambuco. Design/Methodology/Approach. The research has a qualitative character and is based on the exploratory study. It was used the case study method, where the processes of a digital curation cycle were planned and applied to the collections of Deliberative Council of SUDENE, the University Television of Recife, the journalist Samarone Lima and the record label Rosenblitz. Results/Discussion. The curatorial cycle was applied to 21,360 documents of the collections, contributing to the preservations of the involved institutions memory and to the initiative of free access to information. It should be emphasized that the collections safeguard information such as bibliographic, archival, administrative, audio-visual, sound, photographic and cartographic documents of cultural and historical value. Conclusions. The processes that involve the useful life of a digital object requires that the institutions and professionals involved in the curatorial processes thinking and rethinking their activities, since acquisition, management, storage, preservation and access are part of a whole and can not be seen in isolation. Originality/Value. While some Brazilian institutions are somehow involved in curatorial activities, many still do not have consolidated standards, staff, or resources to ensure the success and sustainability of such a project, and bring the need for collaboration among institutions. Thus, this experience report presents projects developed in collaboration

Desire Lines: Open Educational Collections, Memory and the Social Machine

This paper delineates the initial ideas around the development of the Co-Curate North East project. The idea of computerised machines which have a social use and impact was central to the development of the project. The project was designed with and for schools and communities as a digital platform which would collect and aggregate ‘memory’ resources and collections around local area studies and social identity. It was a co-curation process supported by museums and curators which was about the ‘meshwork’ between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ archives and collections and the ways in which materials generated from within the schools and community groups could themselves be re-narrated and exhibited online as part of self-organised learning experiences. This paper looks at initial ideas of social machines and the ways in machines can be used in identity and memory studies. It examines ideas of navigation and visualisation of data and concludes with some initial findings from the early stages of the project about the potential for machines and educational work

Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

Redefining the performing arts archive

This paper investigates representations of performance and the role of the archive. Notions of record and archive are critically investigated, raising questions about applying traditional archival definitions to the performing arts. Defining the nature of performances is at the root of all difficulties regarding their representation. Performances are live events, so for many people the idea of recording them for posterity is inappropriate. The challenge of creating and curating representations of an ephemeral art form are explored and performance-specific concepts of record and archive are posited. An open model of archives, encouraging multiple representations and allowing for creative reuse and reinterpretation to keep the spirit of the performance alive, is envisaged as the future of the performing arts archive

Ahead of the CurV: digital curator vocational education

In this paper, we describe the work of the EC-funded DigCurV project. We examine the context of the project, the methods and findings of its extensive survey work, and the development of proposed frameworks for evaluating and delivering a digital curation curriculum