The document discusses digital curation in art museums. It begins by defining digital curation as "the planning and management of digital assets over their full lifetime, from conceptualization through active use and presentation to long-term preservation in a repository for future re-use". It then discusses how curation involves acquisition, exhibition, and preservation of collections. It also notes that as digital curators, people take on roles like making collections available online, providing contextual information and tools to make collections useful, and improving methods for preserving and providing access to born-digital materials. The document emphasizes that digital curation requires both technological skills and an understanding of people and processes.
Digital Curation Technology: JHU Summit, October 2015
1. Digital Curation in Art Museums
Technology, People, Process
Douglas Hegley
Minneapolis Institute of Art
dhegley@artsmia.org
@dhegley
www.slideshare.net/dhegley
6. Digital Curation:
“The planning and management of digital assets over their full lifetime, from
conceptualization through active use and presentation to long-term preservation
in a repository for future re-use”.
- Phyllis Hecht
7. Digital Curation:
The planning and management of digital assets over their full lifetime, from
conceptualization through active use and presentation to long-term preservation
in a repository for future re-use.
- Phyllis Hecht
“digital assets” – which ones?
“full lifetime” – how to define?
“active use” – by whom? for what?
“long-term preservation” – how long?
“repository” – what kind? which one?
“future re-use” – wait, you can predict the future?!
8. But what is it we really mean when we say curation?
Curation is Acquisition
… an act of selection … selectively acquiring items to make the collection
more comprehensive and/or focused … considering and appraising,
researching, contextualizing and selecting, constantly searching and
refining.
Curation is Exhibition
… conceptualization, interpretation and transformation of objects into an
illustration, making the objects and the message accessible to a wide audience
Curation is Preservation
… the storage and care of collections, sometimes passive and sometimes active.
Source: http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2014/03/what-could-curation-possibly-mean/
Image Source: http://ullushop.com/wp-content/uploads/Art-1.jpg
Image Source: https://bethhellerconservation.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/img_1949.jpg
9. Traditionally, curators are responsible for acquiring material for
a collection, preserving these materials for future generations, helping users
locate items from the collection and providing contextual information so they can
better understand them, and designing exhibits for the benefit and enjoyment of the
public. As digital curator, I will do most of these things as well, but I have specifically
made it my mission to:
• make as much of our collection available online as copyright
law, professional ethics, and our budget permits
• provide both contextual information and software tools to make our
digital collections as useful as possible
• improve methods for preserving and providing access to the "born
digital" materials (word processor files, digital musical scores, 3d set designs,
etc.) that are now part of the creative history of most contemporary works of art
Source: http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/04/04/what-digital-curator
13. Digital vs. Traditional Publishing
pros
• Faster time to publish new findings
• No unit cost
• Rich media
• Showing rather than telling (e.g.,
conservation demonstrations)
• Interactivity/dialogue
• Highly scalable
cons
• Digital publishing workflows out of
synch with conventions of scholarship
• Perception of unlimited capacity –
grey area around content
length/balance
• Scholarly publishing is an awkward fit
for interactive dialogue
• Technology changes fast (operating
systems, media formats, etc)
Thank you Amy Heibel (LACMA) for letting me steal this slide.
28. Source: Jeonghyun Kim, Edward Warga, William Moen. Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements,
International Journal of Digital Curation, 2013, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 66-83
“ … digital curation jobs are
characterized by a complex
interplay of various skills and
knowledge”
29. Source: Jeonghyun Kim, Edward Warga, William Moen. Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements,
International Journal of Digital Curation, 2013, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 66-83
30. Source: Jeonghyun Kim, Edward Warga, William Moen. Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements,
International Journal of Digital Curation, 2013, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 66-83
31. UNIX/Linux * Java, PHP, and Perl * HTML and other Web-related markup languages * XML and XSLT
Relational databases including MySQL and Oracle
Desktop productivity software
Advanced graphics software
Metadata standards: MARC * Dublin Core * METS * MODS * PREMIS
Semantic web, linked data and other standards related to digital preservation, such as ISO 16363 Trusted
Digital Repository Checklist
DSpace * Fedora * CONTENTdm * Digital Commons * Archivists’ Toolkit
Digital content creation/transformation tools
Research data analysis tools, such as SPSS, SAS and Nvivo
Voyager and Horizon
Drupal, WordPress, Joomla
Digitization, creating metadata, managing repositories and implementing preservation practices
working knowledge of curation, including various media formats, curation workflows, data management
principles, repository architecture, search and retrieval technology, preservation strategies, applicable
provisions of copyright laws, and academic/research policies and procedures related to data management.
Project management skills
Source: Jeonghyun Kim, Edward Warga, William Moen. Competencies Required for Digital Curation: An Analysis of Job Advertisements,
International Journal of Digital Curation, 2013, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 66-83
Oh, just a few simple skills …
32. Siri, can we do
digital curation?
Okay, let’s get
started …
A
41. GETTING
HERE
Unrealistic expectations of digital technology to
perform miracles – leads to: inability to harness
potential benefits (wishful thinking)
Benefits of digitcccccccccal
technology have been
demonstrated
Benefits of digital technology
have been demonstrated
Forward-thinking organizations realize the difficulties
and the complexities – use that understanding to
develop practical approaches to implementation.
The Hype Cycle
I’m here today tasked with talking about TECHNOLOGY (bum bum bum!)
Of course, the risk is … yawn. I’ll do my best not to put you in this state.
When Phyllis asked me to join this summit on digital curation, my first question to her was … what do you mean by that? A google search turns up several inconsistent answers.
It does seem clear that we need grapple with the tons of digital content that we produce, as organizations and as individuals.
I suppose all definitions lead to more questions, right?
So I started digging deeper, using some of the resources that Phyllis shared. I found out a few more things.
… and more … seemed to be getting closer to what I THINK she asked me to talk about.
Is this the point in time for me to confess that I may be a bear of very little brain on this topic? I will at least say that I am nowhere near an expert, but I am grappling with not just understanding the scope of what we face but also getting tools in place to help us right now and going forward. I know that I will be learning from all of you over these two days. My goal this morning will be to illuminate some of the issues that face us, with a special focus on the technology and the technical skills needed in the people we are going to hire to help us solve these challenges.
At this point in history, museums have “gone digital”. That ship has sailed and we are no longer debating the concept.
In fact, it has been argued that any and all businesses in this day that interact with customers are digital publishing houses.
And digital publishing comes with a set of advantages and disadvantages.
As a field, we all make content, we store it, we publish it and share it as best as we can.
And of course there are born-digital works of art to contend with as well – “objects” that we acquire, but they don’t come in crates - they come in code.
I realize this is a pretty dense slide for a short presentation. I promise that I will share this deck on slideshare if you want to dive into it in more detail, but we’ve got to move fast today. Here I’m just illustrating that we have an array of content types, storage needs, and digitization workflows.
Here’s and even-more-complex diagram that I found from the Univ of Miami, looking at the ebb and flow of digital content and the practice of data curation to add value, security, and sustainability.
Clearly, we need some effective tools, and more than likely Grandpa’s old tool box isn’t likely to do the job.
Because I think all of you are well-aware of the essential functionalities of DAMs, I’ll linger on this slide for only a moment.
One of our challenges when it comes to tools is that the industry itself is fractured (probably because DAMs evolved in so many different verticals), and even so-called industry experts (and I do think that the RealStory Group is very capable) can’t seem to decide how to group, classify, sort all of the options. Believe it or not, and powerful tools or not, it remains my contention that the DAMs field is not yet fully mature.
Even if we limit ourselves to Open Source DAMs:
There are literally hundreds on the market; and relevant to us: most are not focused on a cultural heritage end user.
Back to the RealStory Group – they’ve even tried to apply a sort of London Underground Map visualization in order to capture the multiple vendors, systems and capabilities. Where do we even start?
To rein this in a bit, I’m throwing up a schematic of how we are approaching our needs at Mia. I’m not recommending this by any means, please see it as an illustration.
MediaBin has been our commercial DAMs for several years.
We are completing our IMLS-funded project to implement ResourceSpace and tie all of our digital content repositories together using Redis and Elastic Search. Gettin’ there!
And I think we’ll be hearing from Ben next on the agenda, which I’m definitely looking forward to. The tools are coming along, and the more we work together like this, the better for all of us.
So let’s shift our attention to people.
Okay, fair enough, it’s not an easy task to get the wide set of skills needed to be great at digital curation. But there must be some common threads. I’ll be borrowing some content from this interesting study listed below.
What do you call this kind of job? Does that influence who will apply?
And whomever you hire is going to have to know a whole hell of a lot, apparently.
I mean, just look at this list! Even a genius devoted entirely to this pursuit is going to take years to master all of this! Begs the question: is it really necessary??
Ultimately I am a firm believer that the best thing to do is to get started. Work iteratively, learn as you go, share widely. We can do this!
And of course attitude and character are traits; skills can be learned. This is forgotten so often that it’s absurd.
And what about workflows? Often convoluted, tangled, left in the pot too long …
In these few minutes I just don’t have time to break workflows down effectively. Even with more time it would be a real challenge. The caveat I’ll leave you with today: be careful about software tools that force you to adopt non-standard workflows or that are not able to adapt to changing workflows over time. Good luck.
We could certainly use a simplified metadata model, to cover a core set of file formats. And to ensure that the assets and the metadata travel well
Of course we all probably know this one …
Still, we needed SOMETHING! At Mia, we went panning for metadata properties – metadata gold, if you will. Sifting though the flood of standards and specifications, sticking largely to the ISO standards along the way.
With MiaCore, we are capturing the basics including: With xmpBasicJob, we’re capturing Project Names, Project References; With xmpRights, Creative Commons, and PLUS, Basic Rights Management, Including Embargo and Constraints Information; With VRA Core, we’re capturing tombstone information about works of art; With MiaCore fields, we’re capturing quality control tags, and a range of sync keys for our API. For example, ObjectID, or EventID for sync with TMS, our Collections Information System
Sigh. Are we guilty of proliferation? Probably. Double sigh. But we simply had to cut down on what we were keeping and establish a set of metadata fields that would really work for us. Would we love it if all art museums adopted this model? Absolutely. So, anyone want to use my toothbrush?
We’ve still got plenty of challenges on the horizon, here are just a few:
In the cultural heritage sector, we are on the cusp of really understanding and utilizing digital curation/DAMs technology for our benefit. We’ve moved past the days of dreamy uptopianism, and we are working our way up to productivity.
Long-term preservation & archival practices still need to be dealt with – how do we sustain our digital assets over very long periods of time? Most commercial DAMs are built to get the latest merchandise published, then to move on to the next season’s stuff. Preservation is not first and foremost across the industry.
2. Workflow management tools still need improving and a bit of standardization, most at present represent custom-made and system-specific internal code. After all, process matters just as much as product in any organization that strives for efficiency.
3. Deployment + usage tracking + external access … We’d like to know what our assets are up to out there, without onerous manual tracking.
4. Born-digital works of art represent the 800 lb gorilla in the room – is it the responsibility of the DAMs and its manager(s)? Art acquisition is very, very expensive. Museums know how to tend to sculpture and paintings over time, but we are still novices at really coping with conservation and preservation of born-digital works.
I remain optimistic. Technology changes so rapidly, and the need for longer-term preservation of our collective creative output is recognized widely. Our job is to keep demanding excellent tools and to use them to their fullest extent.