First instalment of Digital Curation Manual now available
Scientists and researchers across the UK generate increasingly vast amounts of digital data. The Digital Curation Centre, funded by Jisc and the e-science core programme, was set up in 2004 in order to support them and to provide a national focus for research and development into digital curation issues.
One of the key objectives of the DCC is the creation and maintenance of a world-class Digital Curation Manual. The DCC Digital Curation Manual is a community-driven resource - from the selection of instalment topics through to authorship and peer review. Individual instalments authored by leading experts in the field of digital curation will cover a range of issues relating to digital curation. The Digital Curation Manual is designed to assist data creators, curators and re-users to better understand the challenges they face and the roles they play in creating, managing and preserving their digital information over time.
Each instalment will place the topic in the context of digital curation by providing an introduction to the subject, an explanation of terminology used, suggestions for best practice and by providing real-life examples of the topic in action. To ensure that the Digital Curation Manual is as current as possible, authors will be required to review and update their individual instalments on an annual basis reflecting any major developments.
To ensure that the highest possible quality is achieved, the DCC has assembled a peer review panel and an editorial board consisting of international experts in the field of digital curation to review each instalment that is produced for the Digital Curation Manual.
The first instalment of the DCC Digital Curation Manual is now available for download. Entitled "Open Source for Digital Curation" and written by DCC Advisory Services Manager Andrew McHugh, the first instalment aims to:
- Describe a range of explicit digital curation application areas for open source;
- Offer some examples of existing uses of open source software;
- Highlight a selection of open source applications of interest to digital creators, curators and re-users;
- Deliver quantitative insights into the value of open source software;
- Offer guidelines for institutions planning to introduce these technologies.
Two more instalments, on Metadata and Curation of Dynamic Data, will be published within the next two months. Approximately 45 instalments have already been commissioned and these will be released throughout the duration of the DCC project.
Click here for further information on the Digital Curation Centre