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

Abstract

"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