MSU Digital Curation Planning

July 26, 2010

Final Report of the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project

Filed under: General — admin @ 11:27 am

The Digital Curation Planning Team at Michigan State University has completed its year-long Digital Curation Planning Project—a project that raised awareness of digital curation needs across campus, confirmed that the development of common digital curation guidelines will be an iterative process, and helped to shape next steps in digital curation planning at the university. A final report on the project includes descriptions and results of the survey methods used, including a university-wide, online questionnaire and one-on-one interviews with select campus units; analysis of survey findings; recommended next steps in digital curation planning at MSU; and individual reports of the one-on-one interviews as appendices.

Click here to view a PDF of the Michigan State University Digital Curation Planning Project final report: Digital Curation Planning Final Report.

April 1, 2010

Presentation on Digital Curation Planning Project at University of Michigan

Filed under: General — admin @ 4:23 pm

On March 29, 2010, Lisa Schmidt traveled to Ann Arbor to deliver a presentation on the MSU Digital Curation Planning project to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) student chapter at the University of Michigan’s School of Information.  In addition to an overview of the project, the presentation included a preliminary analysis of the results of one-on-one meetings with MSU units, as well as ideas for next steps in digital curation planning at the close of this phase of the project. Click here to view a PDF of the presentation: University of Michigan Presentation.

January 20, 2010

MSU Digital Curation Planning Project Featured at ALA Midwinter Interest Group Meeting

Filed under: General — admin @ 6:15 pm

On January 17, Lisa Schmidt delivered a presentation on the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project to the Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Boston. The presentation, which covered activity on the project to date, met with a great deal of interest and fired lively conversation among the approximately 50 attendees. Click here to view a PDF of the presentation: ALA Midwinter 2010 Presentation

September 30, 2009

“Digital Curation”— What is This?

Filed under: General — admin @ 4:20 pm

The introduction to the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project included some possibly unfamiliar terms, such as “digital curation.” Besides providing information and updates on the project itself, this website seeks to offer resources that will help to educate the University community about the research and concepts that inform the project. One great resource on the preservation and management of digital assets is the “Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems” tutorial. More educational resources will be posted on the Resources page of the website. (If a good resource you know of isn’t posted there, please contact Lisa Schmidt at lisa.schmidt@matrix.msu.edu or leave it in the comment section.)

And what exactly is “digital curation”? According to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), digital curation is “the active management and enhancement of trusted digital resources across the life cycle.” In a word, proper curation ensures that digital objects such as computer files are captured, stored, preserved, and made accessible for the long term.

September 28, 2009

Introducing the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project

Filed under: General — admin @ 1:14 pm

Like other research universities, Michigan State University has amassed a growing body of digital information. Much time, effort, grant funding, human capital, and research has gone into creating these digital resources—some of which only exist in digital form. All of MSU’s digital assets are at risk of eventually becoming inaccessible due to the ever-changing nature of technology. Through a collaboration of the University Archives, MATRIX, and the MSU Libraries, and with the support of the Office of the Vice Provost of Libraries, Computing and Technology, MSU seeks to develop a digital curation plan and guidelines to ensure trustworthy preservation, management, and stewardship of the university’s digital assets and intellectual property.

Anticipated outcomes of this MSU Digital Curation Planning Project include:

  • Determining institutional readiness for digital asset preservation and management through a gap analysis of existing assets, technical infrastructure, and digital repositories at select MSU units.
  • Providing units with guidelines on how best to preserve and manage existing digital assets and plan for the future, based on best practices, available resources, and anticipated future resources.
  • Creating awareness of technical resources across campus.

What the MSU Digital Curation Planning Project will not do:

  • Mandate one-size-fits-all digital preservation policies.
  • Create and mandate the use of a one-size-fits-all data repository for the university.
  • Address confidential or sensitive data.

The first step in this analysis will be a survey of campus units housing representative samples of major categories of data, including but not limited to: non-confidential administrative data, faculty and student research, theses, and dissertations; research data sets; instructional media resources; university publications; multimedia collections; and more. Again, no confidential data or data with security issues will be covered in the survey.

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