Digital Curation: A How‐to‐do‐it Manual

In the 1950s, young people were promised routine space flights, if not life on the moon; robots were soon to be familiar household servants. Soon afterwards, as we grew into higher education, integrated circuits offered the prospect that all human knowledge would imminently be accessible to all via computers, as miniaturisation and mind expansion seemed to go together in a kind of universal cultural reprogramming. This book reminds us that we still have a long way to go, even to remember what we have recorded digitally in the meantime, let alone information that is still to be gathered.

In fact, this scholarly guidance manual does not worry itself too much with the general population and their concerns, but rather with the pressing needs of the academic research communities that have already accumulated large quantities of unintentionally ephemeral, digital data. Lessons and approaches are, however, likely to be very relevant to others, as is mentioned in the introduction. The main justification for the title comes from its extension beyond digital preservation. We now have some considerable experience of digitisation projects distilled into the standards and guidelines that underpin this book. It is therefore very timely for the author to address a wider audience.

Digital curation is defined by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) as “maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital research data for current and future use; it encompasses the active management throughout the research lifecycle”. Ross Harvey is a widely travelled professor who has worked extensively in Glasgow as well as in Seoul, Boston and British Columbia, making this volume unusually interesting for non‐US readers. Although the issues it addresses are universal, the UK evidence base, drawing heavily on the work of the DCC, will help convince many of the value of such a well‐structured, comprehensive manual.

Part 1 includes four chapters on scope and incentives, outlining what digital curation is, who carries out which tasks and why. The Introduction is a very effective outline, laid out in the manner of all the chapters, with clear section headings, a chapter heading list in the large margin, a figure showing threats to digital continuity, a concluding summary of the main characteristics of digital curation and a list of mainly web accessible references, up to date as of April 2010. The second chapter looks at some project and academic programmes addressing training and skills development in response to the changing scholarly landscape. Many lessons derived from digitisation projects to date have been distilled into so‐called models, enabling comprehensive planning, management and evaluation of work. Chapter 3 describes the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model, the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model and their relationships, concluding with a summary of the importance of models. This explains exactly what we are trying to curate and the need for open, flexible procedures, practices and theories.

In many ways, this first section of the book is the most successful, since it is the most satisfying intellectually and perhaps the most stimulating. The remaining sections examine things in more detail, starting with the four Lifecycle Actions of the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model – curate and preserve, description and representation information, preservation planning, and community watch and participation. Sometimes this section becomes a little mechanistic and less easy to read, but it is nevertheless an accurate and useful introduction to extensive documentation elsewhere. For example, metadata schemas such as METS and PREMIS are briefly dealt with, which may be off‐putting to newcomers to the concepts, but managers may find the expert commentary on the relative features useful when talking to consultants or experts. The value here is in the clear place given to each acronym or concept and the evidence‐based, expert commentary. These chapters often include key points and activities, pullout boxes that help access meaning and reinforce learning. All of this should help readers participate in the inevitable collaboration that digital curation involves, as is stressed in the conclusion of this section.

The third section focuses on even more detailed advice, picking out the key messages from previous research rather than trying to provide a step‐by‐step guide. Even so, there is a lot to think about in this section, and the author perhaps risks frightening away some less committed readers at this stage. This would be avoided by the reader dipping into sections at intervals rather than trying to take everything in all at one sitting. Also, this is not a job for a solo manager: the content here should form the basis of wider discussions.

For those outside the larger academic institutions, questions arise as to whether proper curation is feasible at all. Even apparently simple notions, such as quality of data, may not be as straightforward in practice as they seem. This is where the book can help. It raises questions (is it robust, simple, thoroughly tested and loss free?) that may not come immediately to mind; it then suggests possible solutions and formats that address the issue rather than dictating a single approach.

Another useful feature of the work is its risk management approach. This is elaborated particularly in a chapter on deciding what data to keep. It introduces the idea of appraisal, and the need to be selective, but also to take a reasoned approach. Policies and tools for appraisal and reappraisal are discussed in sufficient detail to encourage thought, but also to inspire action. Finally, access, use and re‐use of data are considered, since these are the purpose of digital curation and are the justification for other aspects of the work.

Overall the author has masterfully brought together a great deal of knowledge around a very important topic for many archivists and information staff. Here is a sound intellectual framework and basis for digital curation, ideally beyond its original academic environment. Perhaps one day we could have a set of standard records by which to judge future curation success? Maybe some Facebooks, library MARC files, or an XML database of local studies finding lists? Probably even the professionals will rely on outsiders ’in the cloud’ delivering preservation, but this book explains that digital curation goes beyond that and cannot be undertaken by a single party, for example by ignoring those who create or will re‐use the data. Indeed, there may be fewer trusted digital agencies in future (just Google, Microsoft and Apple and the humble household butler robot?), but there will always be a need for knowledgeable, collaborative, information professionals, and this book should help make more of them and help spread understanding of the need for them.