Placing the Horse before the Cart: Conceptual and Technical Dimensions of Digital Curation

»Spannt das Pferd vor den Wagen! Konzeptuelle und technische Dimensionen Digitaler Bestandspflege«. Digital curation has to come from a conceptual starting point, like any other research or educational program. The balance between the practical and the theoretical components can be discussed: As Digital Humanities – and Digital Curation as part of it – stand at a nexus between traditional Humanities and Social Sciences, this balance may be less obvious, a position at that nexus is particularly rewarding however. The need for developments within Computer Science has to be determined by the joined conceptual mandate, however. To provide for an understanding of this conceptual mandate, we describe the development of digital curation. As a term it can be traced back to the early nineties, as a extremely vivid research agenda, with many international links, it has created a plethora of projects, conferences and publications since the early years of this century

Placing the horse before the cart: conceptual and technical dimensions of digital curation

"Digital curation has to come from a conceptual starting point, like any other research or educational program. The balance between the practical and the theoretical components can be discussed: As Digital Humanities - and Digital Curation as part of it - stand at a nexus between traditional Humanities and Social Sciences, this balance may be less obvious, a position at that nexus is particularly rewarding however. The need for developments within Computer Science has to be determined by the joined conceptual mandate, however. To provide for an understanding of this conceptual mandate, we describe the development of digital curation. As a term it can be traced back to the early nineties, as an extremely vivid research agenda, with many international links, it has created a plethora of projects, conferences and publications since the early years of this century." (author's abstract

Digital Curation Education and Training: From Digitization to Graduate Curricula to MOOCs

This paper traces the development of digital and data curation curricula. Due to the brief length of this paper, the focus is on North American initiatives and primarily on continuing education programs. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of professional workshops and the creation of graduate-level courses, certificates, degrees and MOOCs, as well as the role of funding agencies in this process. It concludes with an analysis of what is missing and what is needed to create the workforce required to steward digital assets in the foreseeable future

The Archival Metrics Toolkit: Development and implementation

User based evaluation in archives and manuscript repositories lags behind that of libraries and museums. This paper discusses the development and testing of the Archival Metrics Toolkit which is designed to support archivists in conducting user-based evaluations. The current Toolkit includes 5 different questionnaires focused on assessing various archival services in Colleges and Universities as well as instructions for administration and data analysis. The questionnaires aim to gather feedback from (1) onsite users of the reading room, (2) students who have attended an orientation session and (3) instructors who use the archives for teaching, as well as (4) online users of the website and (5) online users of finding aids.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63088/1/1450450379_ftp.pd

Heritage Quay: What Will You Discover? Transforming the Archives of the University of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK

The Heritage Quay project is changing how archive services at the University of Huddersfield are delivered. This article examines how the Staff/Space/Collections dependency model and Customer Service Excellence framework have been used, and what lessons can be drawn for other archives

Feasibility and marketing studies of health sciences librarianship education programs.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evaluated five curricular models designed to improve education for health sciences librarianship. Three of the models enhanced existing degree and certificate programs, and two were new programs for working information professionals. Models were developed with input from experts and a Delphi study; the marketability of the models was tested through surveys of potential students and employers; and recommendations were made as a guide to implementation. The results demonstrated a demand for more specialized curricula and for retraining opportunities. Marketing data showed a strong interest from potential students in a specialized master's degree, and mid-career professionals indicated an interest in post-master's programs that provided the ability to maintain employment. The study pointed to the opportunity for a center of excellence in health sciences information education to enable health sciences librarians to respond to their evolving roles

Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past

Archival interfaces are criticalnodes in archival systems where archivistsnegotiate and exercise power over theconstitution and representation of archives. Drawing on notions of interfaces from physical,technological, and computer systems, archivalinterfaces are both a metaphor for archivists'roles as intermediaries between documentaryevidence and its readers and a tangible set ofstructures and tools that place archivaldocuments in a context and provide aninterpretative framework. Interfaces in moderninstitutions and technological systems areneither natural nor neutral. In probingarchival interfaces, what may appear as neutraland objective processes are revealed as placeswhere archivists determine what constituteslegitimate evidence of the past and shapesocial memories. The emergence of computerinterfaces as an increasingly common mode ofuser interaction with archives demands thatarchivists confront the interpretative natureof their work and exploit opportunities toplace themselves visibly in the interfaces theyconstruct.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41817/1/10502_2004_Article_5096450.pd

Modeling the Information-Seeking Behavior of Social Scientists: Ellis's Study Revisited

This paper revises David Ellis's information-seeking behavior model of social scientists, which includes six generic features: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The paper uses social science faculty researching stateless nations as the study population. The description and analysis of the information-seeking behavior of this group of scholars is based on data collected through structured and semistructured electronic mail interviews. Sixty faculty members from 14 different countries were interviewed by e-mail. For reality check purposes, face-to-face interviews with five faculty members were also conducted. Although the study confirmed Ellis's model, it found that a fuller description of the information-seeking process of social scientists studying stateless nations should include four additional features besides those identified by Ellis. These new features are: accessing, networking, verifying, and information managing. In view of that, the study develops a new model, which, unlike Ellis's, groups all the features into four interrelated stages: searching, accessing, processing, and ending. This new model is fully described and its implications on research and practice are discussed. How and why scholars studied here are different than other academic social scientists is also discussed

Personal Email Management on the University Digital Desktop: User Behaviors vs. Archival Best Practices

This paper will review findings from an extensive user study which seeks to understand the ways in which individuals currently manage, interact with, and think about electronic files, particularly email. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), we web-surveyed nearly 3000 faculty, staff, and administrators; and conducted personal follow-up interviews with 100 people across two universities: one public, one private. Our findings indicate that users and archivists have competing concerns. User concerns revolve around the volume of files with which they are forced to contend, leading to wasted time, improperly deleted files, confusion, and general dissatisfaction with the networked environment. Archivists, on the other hand, concerned with the preservation of digital materials, are focused on organizational issues that are often at odds with users’ daily practice