-This paper provides an overview of the EC-funded DigCurV project, its context, methods, main findings, and the project's initial framework for a digital curation curriculum and the Curate! game. Ann Gow and Laura Molloy Membership of the network is open to organisations and individuals. Over the last two years, as the project has progressed membership has grown to include 44 organisations and 168 individuals. Membership is worldwide with members based in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Guatemala, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay, USA and twenty-one European countries. In addition to the registered members, the DigCurV network includes individuals who have registered to receive our newsletter or who are following the project on Twitter.
The Digital Curator Vocational Education Project
(DigCurV) [
DigCurV brings together a network of partners [
II.
The DigCurV project consortium brings together partners from across Europe with two from Canada and the USA. The European partners include HATII (Scotland, UK), the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale (Italy), Georg-AugustUniversität Göttingen (Germany), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Vliniaus Universiteto Biblioteka (Lithuania) and MDR Partners (England, UK). The Leonardo da Vinci programme allows for organisations from countries outside Europe to join project consortia which enabled the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto (Canada) and the Institute of Museum and Library Studies (USA) to be affiliated with the project.
From the beginning DigCurV has aimed to build a network of stakeholder organisations with a strong interest in training and education in the field of digital curation. The founding members of the DigCurV network included the Digital Preservation Coalition (UK), the nestor qualification
training
Completing a survey and analysis of the need for
vocational education and training amongst the staff of
cultural institutions;
Identifying the key roles, skills and competences of
digital curation;
Establishing an initial framework for a digital curation
curriculum, working with the stakeholder network to
evaluate and inform the framework as it has been
developed via focus group meetings, workshops and
other activities;
Disseminating and promoting the project’s activities
and its results, with a specific aim of promoting the
exploitation of the projects outputs by educators,
institutions and staff across Europe and internationally.
than a dozen European institutions were registered as including
digital curation training as part of their curriculums [
In July and August 2011, DigCurV launched a survey of
training needs in the cultural sector [
DigCurV set out to build on the results of previous initiatives by surveying and analyzing the current situation.
At the beginning of April 2011, DigCurV launched a
survey of existing training opportunities with the aim of:
Identifying institutions, projects and individuals
offering training in digital curation mainly in Europe
but some responses were also obtained from North
America;
Analysing and mapping the training opportunities on
offer to identify topics, skills, learning objectives,
training methodologies and course formats, and
methods of assessment;
Establishing a registry of training opportunities [
IV.
BACKGROUND
Europe’s digital sector has seen strong growth in recent
years in all sectors. Since 2005, the European Commission has
been actively encouraged this growth, particularly in the digital
infrastructure for the economy and ICT skills for jobs, initially
through its i2010 strategy and currently through the 2020
initiative and the Digital Agenda for Europe [
Research carried out in 2009 by the Numeric project [
The pace of development and change in information technology has been very rapid which presents particular challenges to institutions responsible for the management and long-term preservation of digital collections. For cultural heritage institutions the availability of staff with the skills and competences needed to care for the digital objects in their collections is an increasingly pressing issue. Traditionally the staff in libraries, museums, archives and galleries have qualified in the care of physical objects through well established professional and vocational courses. But as digital content becomes increasingly prevalent in the collections held by cultural institutions new skills and competences are required.
Surveys and informal research has been carried out in
several countries, including the UK, Germany and the USA,
which have found that both the recruitment of staff with the
experience and qualifications needed for digital curation, and
providing training for existing staff members are challenges
faced by institutions. In 2004, work by the Digital Preservation
Coalition for the JISC had already established the need for
digital preservation skills and training in multiple sectors in the
UK [
Yet, in spite of this background, when the DigCurV project began in 2011 there were only a small number of institutions offering digital curation as a part of professional courses in library and information management or archives management courses. In June 2011, the JISC organized an International Curation Education Forum (the ICE forum) at which fewer • • • • • • • •
Institutional contexts including for example whether the institution was currently (or planning to) carry out digital preservation of its collections, had plans for recruiting new staff or for training existing staff members; The skills and competences being called for including both general skills and those specific to digital curation; Training preferences for example for the means of delivery (online, in person), the length of course, the type of assessment; The training needs being expressed for specific skills, competences, roles, access to training etc.
In addition to this survey, DigCurV collected job advertisements throughout 2011. This enabled it to obtain a snap-shot of the state of recruitment and the level of skills, competences, qualifications and experience being called for by employers.
Throughout 2012-13 DigCurV has been building on the
results of the surveys completed in 2011 and on experience
within the consortium and from related initiatives to develop an
initial Curriculum Framework [
During the summer and autumn of 2012, the DigCurV team
ran a series of workshops and presented initial versions of
Curriculum Framework at a number of events to invite
feedback [
The Curriculum Framework was launched at the project’s final conference in Florence in May 2013. The framework has three main intended uses: • • •
To build or develop training courses To compare existing courses
DigCurV first developed the Curate! game for a workshop which was held at the DISH conference in Rotterdam in 2011. It was designed to provide a way for curators to explore their changing roles in creating, managing and curating digital content as they advance around the board.
Following the positive feedback received from players of
the game at the first trial session, the Curate! game has been
made available to registered members of the DigCurV network
as a download package [
VI.
This paper provides a brief overview of the activities and results of DigCurV, separate papers in these proceedings describe the projects main activities and results in more detail.
DigCurV has been a highly participatory project. We set out aiming to involve both educationalists and culture sector professionals in our activities to inform the development of the Curriculum Framework. The international network that has grown up around DigCurV is open and we invite new members to join and to exploit the resources that project.
Ultimately, the project’s aim has been to stimulate an increase in the availability of vocational education and training opportunities for digital curators. We look forward to hearing news of the Curriculum Framework and the Curate! game being put to use and about new training courses being developed in future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks go to the entire DigCurV project team and to all the members of the network who have participated in our research and evaluation activities.
DigCurV is funded by the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Agency (EACEA) and its Leonardo da Vinci Programme.