The story so far
My excursion into the world of digital curation has been testing. My technical confidence remains low, but I do have a better grasp of what it entails, how I should think, what to look for and where to find it. I now understand well that it will take time and constant practice and upskilling. This blog has helped me consolidate my learning and expand my vision and links to the very active digital curation community.
But…
Although it made me more comfortable with digital tools, resources and language, it has awakened professional self-doubt. I started seeing IT support as indispensable at every step of the way, which did make me question my own skills.
Yet…
Saying this, I do believe that, as a trainee archivist, I take certain concepts and thought processes for granted. This knowledge is not automatically generated and requires awareness, advocacy, procedures and policies in place. Digital archiving is archiving after all!
It is very encouraging that the Digital Curation community is collaborative and open, sharing knowledge and know-how. Digital curators and archivists train and retrain in different skills and tools, always updating, researching and trying to find resources and solutions in an ever-changing landscape.
The DC module and this blog have provided me with a lot of information, resources and courage. I am optimistic that it is only a matter of time before it all feels more natural and more relatable to my own experiences of archiving and curation.
My next step is to blog about metadata and metadata models and to sign up for an online computer science course as soon as possible.
But for now it is librarians and archivists, the custodians of the past, that are the advance-guards of the future. They have worked with open approaches to software development, data practices and scholarly communication for years. These communities, networks and processes are a vital part of the solution. That way we can hope to avoid losing our wealth of electronic data and our collective social memory, and avert what Vint Cerf, one of the creators of the internet, fears might otherwise become a “digital Dark Age”.’ [1]
[1] Richard Ovenden, “We must fight to preserve digital information,” The Economist 2019,