Digital Sustainability for Cultural Collections

Course Description

What do curators of cultural heritage collections need to know about ensuring the sustainability of digital content? This course covers: 

• fundamentals of good practice, including core concepts and community standards; 
• adopting, adapting, and applying tools and techniques for digital collections;
• developing knowledge and skills for digital content and collections roles; 
• identifying right-sized infrastructure for digital collections; and 
• responding to relevant ongoing technological change for digital collections.  

Students in this seminar will explore digital practice as illustrated by scenarios, examples, and demonstrations with hands-on components in small groups. This seminar builds familiarity with the long-term care of digital content (personal or organizational) and encourages curiosity about the opportunities and implications of digital sustainability. 
 
Students with varying levels of experience and expertise are welcome. Prior to the course, all students will be expected to review the Introductory module that covers working definitions of core concepts, overviews of prevailing standards, and background for current issues and practice. The Introductory module will be available as a resource to students. In their personal statements, students should provide a brief description of their interest in digital content and digital sustainability, indicate current responsibility (if any) for digital collections, identify particular topics of interest for the class, and the profession (or professions) you identify with to help inform the seminar examples and exercises. Note: students are required to be interested in learning about sustaining digital collections, but are not required to be working with digital content to attend the class. 

Students should address the following in their application materials: 

• Are you currently responsible for working with digital content? (You are not required to be working with digital content to attend the class.)  
• What are you particularly interested in learning about during the class?  
• What profession (or professions) do you identify with?  

Course Meeting Times

Students will be granted access to an asynchronous, self-paced learning module on 8 September. The group will decide on a time to meet synchronously during the week of 12 October to discuss the module.  

Regular course meetings will begin on 19 October. The class will meet online from 6 p.m.–8 p.m. ET on Mondays and Wednesdays, 19 October–4 November.

Faculty

Nancy Y. McGovern

Nancy Y. McGovern is Director for Digital Preservation Instruction and Practice at Global Archivist LLC. She is the Director of the Digital Preservation Management (DPM) workshop series that has been …

Kari R. Smith

Kari R. Smith is a digital archivist coach and consultant specializing in digital object lifecycles, workflows, and information management for cultural and archival materials. With over 25 years’ experience, she …

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