The craft of database curation: Taking cues from quiltmaking

Data migration within library, archive and museum collections is a critical process to maintaining collection data and ensuring its availability for future users. This work is also an under supported component of digital curation. In this poster we present the findings from 20 semi-structured interviews with archivists, collection managers and curators who have recently completed a data migration. One of our main findings is the similarities between craft work and migration practices in memory institutions. To demonstrate these similarities, we use quiltmaking as as a framework. These similarities include the practice of piecing multiple systems together to complete a workflow, relying on community collaboration, and inter-generational labor. Our hope is that by highlighting the craftful qualities already embedded in this work we can show alternative best practices to data migration and database management. This is in an effort to get a broader understanding of what a successful data migration can look like

Three Approaches to Documenting Database Migrations

Database migration is a crucial aspect of digital collections management, yet there are few best practices to guide practitioners in this work. There is also limited research on the patterns of use and processes motivating database migrations. In the “Migrating Research Data Collections” project, we are developing these best practices through a multi-case study of database and digital collections migration. We find that a first and fundamental problem faced by collection staff is a sheer lack of documentation about past database migrations. We contribute a discussion of ways information professionals can reconstruct missing documentation, and some three approaches that others might take for documenting migrations going forward. [This paper is a conference pre-print presented at IDCC 2020 after lightweight peer review.

Three approaches to documenting database migrations

Database migration is a crucial aspect of digital collections management, yet there are few best practices to guide practitioners in this work. There is also limited research on the patterns of use and processes motivating database migrations. In the “Migrating Research Data Collections” project, we are developing these best practices through a multi-case study of database and digital collections migration. We find that a first and fundamental problem faced by collection staff is a sheer lack of documentation about past database migrations. We contribute a discussion of ways information professionals can reconstruct missing documentation, and some three approaches that others might take for documenting migrations going forward. [This paper is a conference pre-print presented at IDCC 2020 after lightweight peer review.