Updating the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model

The DCC Curation Lifecycle Model has played a vital role in the field of data curation for over a decade. During that time, the scale and complexity of data have changed dramatically, along with the contexts of data production and use. This paper reports on a study examining factors impacting data curation practices and presents recommendations for updating the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model. The study was grounded in a review of other lifecycle models and informed by a site visit to the Digital Curation Centre and consultation with expert practitioners and researchers. Framed by contemporary conditions impacting the conduct of research and provision of data services, the analysis and proposed recommendations account for the prominence of machine-actionable data, the importance of machine learning for data processing and analytics, growth of integrated research workflows, and escalating concerns with fairness, accountability, and transparency of data and algorithms

Changing Practice in a National Legal Deposit Library

This two-part essay considers how digital culture has influenced ideas about permanence and looks at the change in collecting practice in a legal deposit library. The author asks: how is the idea of permanence, understood in cultural heritage terms, influencing digital culture and thus digital technology? The first part of the essay touches upon the concepts associated with permanence, digital culture, digital technology, social change, and cultural institutions, in relation to collecting digital cultural material. The second part of this essay focuses on the change in collecting practice of the Alexander Turnbull Library (Turnbull Library) at the National Library of New Zealand in developing its heritage collection of electronically published material with the benefit of legal deposit, with a particular focus on the change in practice to include the collection of online publications

Research in the Archival Multiverse

Over the past 15 years, the field of archival studies around the world has experienced unprecedented growth within the academy and within the profession, and archival studies graduate education programs today have among the highest enrolments in any information field. During the same period, there has also been unparalleled expansion and innovation in the diversity of methods and theories being applied in archival scholarship. Global in scope, Research in the Archival Multiverse compiles critical and reflective essays across a wide range of emerging research areas and interests in archival studies; it aims to provide current and future archival academics with a text addressing possible methods and theoretical frameworks that have been and might be used in archival scholarship and research

We are archivists, but are we OK?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that the digital environment of the early twenty-first century is forcing the information sciences to revisit practices and precepts built around paper and physical objects over centuries. The training of archivists, records managers, librarians and museum curators has had to accommodate this new reality. Often the response has been to superimpose a digital overlay on existing curricula. A few have taken a radical approach by scrutinising the fundamentals of the professions and the ontologies of the materials they handle. Design/methodology/approach – The article explores a wide range of the issues exposed by this critique through critical analysis of ideas and published literature. Findings – The authors challenge archive and records management educators to align their curricula with contemporary need and to recognise that partnership with other professionals, particularly in the area of technology, is essential. Practical implications – The present generation owe it to future generations of archivists and records managers to ensure that the education that they get to prepare them for professional life is forward-looking in the same way. Originality/value – This paper aims to raise awareness of the educational needs of twenty-first century archives and records professionals

The risk of losing thick description: Data management challenges Arts and Humanities face in the evolving FAIR data ecosystem

In recent years, FAIR principles have come a long way to serve the global need for generic guidelines governing data management and stewardship. Considering their wide embrace and the support received from governments, policy-makers, governing bodies and funding bodies, FAIR principles have all the potential to have a huge impact on the future landscape of knowledge creation for the better. This opportunity, however, may easily be missed if the specific dynamics of scientific production are not addressed in its disciplinary implementation plans. With the goal of making FAIR meaningful and helping to realise its promises in an arts and humanities context, this paper describes some of the defining aspects underlying the domain-specific epistemic processes that pose hidden or visible challenges in the FAIRification of knowledge creation in Arts and Humanities. By applying the FAIR data guiding principles to arts and humanities data curation workflows, we will show that contrary to their general scope and deliberately domain-independent nature, they have been implicitly designed along underlying assumptions about how knowledge creation operates and communicates. These are: 1. scholarly data or metadata is digital by nature, 2. scholarly data is always created and therefore owned by researchers, and 3. there is a wide community-level agreement on what can be considered scholarly data. The problems around such assumptions in arts and humanities are cornerstones in reconciling disciplinary traditions with the productive implementation of FAIR data management. By addressing them one by one, we aim to contribute to the better understanding of discipline-specific needs and challenges in data production, discovery and reuse. Based on these considerations, we make recommendations that may facilitate the inclusive and optimal implementation of the high-level principles that serve the flourishing of the arts and humanities disciplines rather than imposing limitations on its epistemic practices