Who Does Digital Curation? Roles & Responsibilities

DigCCurr Professional Institute May 15-20, 2011 & January 4-5, 2012

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

Carolyn Hank May 18,2011 Start: 10:45am End: 11:15am

DigCCurr Professional Institute

Source

SOURCE: Digital Curation Centre: Roles. http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/roles

DIVERSITY OF SETTINGS

• Professional context:

– E.g., Archivist, Librarian

• Disciplinary

– E.g., History, Physics

• Institutional/Organizational

– Academic, Corporate, Government

CURATION IN PRACTICE

• Developing and implementing policies

• Analyzing digital content to determine what services can be provided from it

• Providing advice to producers and consumers

• Supporting ingest of deposits to a repository

• Enabling use and reuse

• Enabling discovery and retrieval

• Preservation planning

• Promoting interoperability

SOURCE: Harvey (2010)

hiring for digital curation

THE DIGCCURR FAMILY TREE

SAMPLE JOB TITLES

• Digitization Assistant • Research Programmer (2) • Applications Programmer • Digital Preservation System

Administrator • Research Data Specialist • Digital Collections Research

Assistant • Digital Preservation Specialist (2) • Digital Preservation Researcher • Digital Technologies Manager • Digital Projects Librarian • Digital Imaging Librarian • Digital Services Librarian • Head of Preservation • Content Management Analyst

• Electronic Records Manager • Senior Advisor, Electronic Records • Archivist • Archivist/Reference Librarian • Archival Engineer • Project Archivist for Special

Collections • Digital Archivist (2) • Assistant Archivist • Digital Library Program Assistant • Multimedia and Metadata

Librarian • Cataloger • Technical Manager (2) • Information Technology Specialist

SOURCE: Tibbo, Hank & Lee (2008)

professional competencies

PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES

• Personal attributes

• Interpersonal skills

• Technical skills

• Administration and management skills

• Core ILS course background

• Practical experience

SOURCE: Tibbo, Hank & Lee (2008)

DIGCCURR I PRODUCTS

• High ‐Level Categories of Digital Curation Functions

• Matrix of Digital Curation Knowledge and Competencies

• Carolina Digital Curation Fellowship Program

SOURCE: DigCCurr Project Website. http://www.ils.unc.edu/digccurr/products.html

DIGITAL CURATION FUNCTIONS & SKILLS

• 24 High-level functional categories across six activity areas:

– Technical infrastructure

– Information resource treatment

– Metadata treatment

– Human interaction

– Strategies, prioritization, and judgments

– Administration

Source: Lee (2009). Matrix of Digital Curation

Knowledge and Competencies

HIGH LEVEL FUNCTIONS

• Administration • Advocacy & outreach • Analysis & characterization of

digital objects/packages • Analysis & evaluation of producer

information environment • Archival storage • Common services • Collaboration, coordination &

contracting with external actors • Data management • Description, organization &

intellectual control • Destruction & removal • Identifying, locating, & harvesting • Ingest

• Management • Preservation planning &

implementation • Production • Purchasing & managing licenses • Reference & user support • Selection, appraisal & disposition • Systems engineering &

development • Transfer • Transformation of digital

objects/packages • Use, reuse & adding value to

accessed information • Validation & quality control of

digital objects/packages

Meta-level Functions

• Analysis and documentation of curation functions

• Evaluation and audit of curation functions

• R&D to support curation functions

• Education and sharing of expertise and guidance on curation functions

JOB DESCRIPTION ELEMENTS

• What to be done

• Why it is being done

• And what are the anticipated outcomes

• Use explicit terminology

• See Job Description Mapping Tool

Source: JISC & Brunton Consultancy (2009)

INTERNSHIPS/PRACTICUMS

DigCCurr Professional Institute

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Roles and Responsibilities May 18, 2011 /Carolyn Hank

Sources Harvey, R. (2010). Digital curation: A how-to-do-it manual (#170). New York: Neal-Schuman.

JISC & Brunton Consultancy (2009, March). Recruitment toolkit for JISC Digital Repository Projects (Version 1.1). http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment/recruitment.aspx

Lee, C.A. (2009, June 17). Matrix of digital curation knowledge and competencies (overview), version 13. http://www.ils.unc.edu/digccurr/digccurr-matrix.html

Tibbo, H.R., Hank, C., & Lee, C.A. (2008). Challenges, curricula, and competencies: Researcher and practitioner perspectives for informing the development of a digital curation curriculum. In Archiving 2008: Final Program and Proceedings (pp. 234-238). Springfield, VA: Society for Imaging Science and Technology.

Merci. CAROLYN HANK

Email: carolyn.hank@mcgill.ca

Phone: 514-398-4684

DigCCurr Professional Institute

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Roles and Responsibilities May 18, 2011 /Carolyn Hank