Preparing The Workforce For Digital Curation

The massive increase in digital information in the last decade has created new requirements for institutional and technological structures and workforce skills. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation focuses on education and training needs to meet the demands for access to and meaningful use of digital information, now and in the future. This study identifies the various practices and spectrum of skill sets that comprise digital curation, looking in particular at human versus automated tasks. Additionally, the report examines the possible career path demands and options for professionals working in digital curation activities, and analyzes the economic benefits and societal importance of digital curation for competitiveness, innovation, and scientific advancement. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation considers the evolving roles and models of digital curation functions in research organizations, and their effects on employment opportunities and requirements. The recommendations of this report will help to advance digital curation and meet the demand for a trained workforce.

The massive increase in digital information in the last decade has created new requirements for institutional and technological structures and workforce skills. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation focuses on education and training needs to meet the demands for access to and meaningful use of digital information, now and in the future. This study identifies the various practices and spectrum of skill sets that comprise digital curation, looking in particular at human versus automated tasks. Additionally, the report examines the possible career path demands and options for professionals working in digital curation activities, and analyzes the economic benefits and societal importance of digital curation for competitiveness, innovation, and scientific advancement. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation considers the evolving roles and models of digital curation functions in research organizations, and their effects on employment opportunities and requirements. The recommendations of this report will help to advance digital curation and meet the demand for a trained workforce.

Websites and digital news stories disappear daily; researchers can’t access their own data for reuse; students don’t know how to make their work last for the next 10 years. Knowledge is built on previously gathered information, but what happens when that information is no longer accessible? And where does the librarian or archivist fit into this picture? This book describes the basic steps of data curation, in clear easy-to-follow language, and clarifies the many potential roles that a librarian or archivist can play to help make our information future viable for generations to come. Digital Curation Fundamentals is for anyone who wants to help save knowledge for future use, but knows little-to-nothing about digital curation or how it fits with their jobs. This book is also for administrators who need to stay on top of things but don’t yet have a good grasp on the purpose and scope of digital curation and how central it is to the future. Additionally, this book is a reference handbook for those who are involved in digital curation in some form but who need the context to know how their work fits into the big picture, and what comes next. This book takes a straight-forward, commonsense approach to a complex problem, and portrays the challenges and opportunities in an approachable conversational style which lowers the bar to include those with little to no technical expertise.

With new technologies and additional goals driving their institutions, archives are changing drastically. This book shows how the foundations of archival practice can be brought forward to adapt to new environments—while adhering to the key principles of preservation and access. Archives of all types are experiencing a resurgence, evolving to meet new environments (digital and physical) and new priorities. To meet those changes, professional archivist education programs—now one of the more active segments of LIS schools—are proliferating as well. This book identifies core archival theories and approaches and how those interact with major issues and trends in the field. The essays explore the progression of archival thinking today, discussing the nature of archives in light of present-day roles for archivists and archival institutions in the preservation of documentary heritage. Examining new conceptualizations and emerging frameworks through the lenses of core archival practice and theory, the book covers core foundational topics, such as the nature of archives, the ruling concept of provenance, and the principal functions of archivists, discussing each in the context of current and future environments and priorities. Several new essays on topics of central importance not treated in the first edition are included, such as digital preservation and the influence of new technologies on institutional programs that facilitate archival access, advocacy, and outreach; the changing legal context of archives and archival work; and the archival collections of private persons and organizations. Readers will also learn how communities of various kinds intersect with the archival mission and how other disciplines' perspectives on archives can open new avenues.

The third edition of Preserving Digital Materials provides a survey of the digital preservation landscape. This book is structured around four questions: 1. Why do we preserve digital materials? 2. What digital materials do we preserve? 3. How do we preserve digital materials? 4. How do we manage digital preservation? This is a concise handbook and reference for a wide range of stakeholders who need to understand how preservation works in the digital world. It notes the increasing importance of the role of new stakeholders and the general public in digital preservation. It can be used as both a textbook for teaching digital preservation and as a guide for the many stakeholders who engage in digital preservation. Its synthesis of current information, research, and perspectives about digital preservation from a wide range of sources across many areas of practice makes it of interest to all who are concerned with digital preservation. It will be of use to preservation administrators and managers, who want a professional reference text, information professionals, who wish to reflect on the issues that digital preservation raises in their professional practice, and students in the field of digital preservation.

Leveraging Digital Tools to Assess Student Learning provides a practical approach to using technology to collect, interpret, and curate assessment data in K-12 in-person, online, hybrid, and dual learning environments. Digital media, emerging learning technologies, and handheld devices play larger roles than ever in students’ 21st-century educational experiences. Digital tools, meanwhile, can also transform assessment practices for teachers, allowing more efficient means of identifying gaps and modifying instruction to maximize student learning. Situating assessment practices in today’s networked, flexible, and virtual classrooms, this book reframes polling and quizzing, social media and memes, and multimedia platforms as digital learning tools for engaging, interactive, and meaningful formative, summative, open-ended, peer and self-paced assessments. The final chapter discusses technology’s role in organizing, evaluating, and disseminating assessment data to students, their families, and administrators.

In order to achieve its full value, knowledge must flow and be continuously used. Knowledge use, reuse, and repurposing has been a challenge discussed in knowledge sciences literature for over three decades. The authors investigate and offer solutions to two key challenges - how to preserve and curate knowledge.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Transforming Digital Worlds, iConference 2018, held in Sheffield, UK, in March 2018. The 42 full papers and 40 short papers presented together with the abstracts of 3 invited talks in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 219 submissions. The papers address topics such as social media; communication studies and online communities; mobile information and cloud computing; data mining and data analytics; information retrieval; information behaviour and digital literacy; digital curation; and information education and libraries.