Closing the Digital Curation Gap
Posted by Marieke Guy on July 6th, 2011
Last week on the day before the ICE Forum (28th June 2011) I attended the Closing the Digital Curation Gap Meeting.
CDCG is an International Collaboration to Integrate Best Practice, Research & Development, and Training in Digital Curation. It has been running since October 2009 and was scheduled to finish in September this year but has just been given an extension (till September 2012). A comprehensive overview of the project is given on the Digital Curation Exchange Web site.
The Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG) collaboration is designed to serve as a locus of interaction between those doing leading edge digital curation research, development, teaching, and training in academic and practitioner communities those with a professional interest in applying viable innovations within particular organizational contexts; IMLS; JISC; the DCC, charged with disseminating such innovation and best practices; and the SCA, charged to build a common information environment where users of publicly funded e-Content can realize best value by reducing the barriers that inhibit access, use and re-use of online content.
I have come along to the project at a fairly late stage but hope I can still be of use and possibly offer a new perspective (that of not being an expert!).
The June meeting was held at the JISC offices in London and was a joint meeting of the US and UK partners. The UK was represented by members from JISC, UKOLN, ULCC, HATII, the BL and the DPC, the US had people from the Bishoff Group, Penn State University Libraries, Purdue University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Toronto. [Thanks to Sharon McMeeking from the DPC for sharing her notes to help jig my memory].
The aims of the meeting were to discuss the outputs of the project so far and to set objectives for the continuation of the work in 2011/12. The main work so far has been staging a number of focus groups, work on decision trees and work on best practice guides. The digital curation exchange web site is the key resource that has been created. Much of the meeting involved discussion of the digital curation exchange: we were encouraged to pass on constructive critism, suggestions on process and ideas for future resources.
They have quite a lot to work on before the next meeting – good luck to them!