Digital Curation: A How-To-Do-It Manual (How-To-Do-It Manuals

by Ross Harvey

International authority Ross Harvey's new How-To-Do It-Manual is the first one-stop resource in digital curation, and guides readers to understand and make the best use of the wide-ranging combinations of strategies, technological approaches, and activities that apply to this rapidly-emerging field. Any information professional who appraises, selects, organizes, or maintains digital resources acts as a digital curator. Whether you are a librarian, archivist, or records manager, you will find useful concepts here for professional setting. Harvey offers an in-depth, start-to-finish explanation of the digital curation process, and clarifies each step in the Digital Curation Centre's (DCC) lifecycle model, Create or Receive; Appraise & Select; Ingest; Preservation Action; Store; Access, Use, and Reuse; and Transform. You will learn best practices for improving data access, quality, and protection, and find time-saving tools such as an extensive directory of online resources, tutorials and further references in the area. Book buyers receive exclusive access to a password-protected companion website that offers electronic, customizable versions of planning forms, checklists, and more. This book's essential techniques and expert advice are crucial to ensuring that today's digital resources will be available to and useable by future generations.

Genres: Library Science, Nonfiction, Professional Development, Textbooks, Librarianship, Technology

225 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2010

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes taking professional classes and going to education confrences can be amazingly depressing. "You thought you were doing OK? You know your system has problems and thought this class might help? HAH! Here's a whole slew of problems you didn't even know you had!

I suppose that's how education is supposed to work.

I read the book, I took the class, I wrote the papers, got involved in the discussions - heck I aced the class. That said, I do NOT feel confident that the recommendataions and procedures that this class list as best practices will get implemented in my job. I can refer to them, I can push for them, but the in the real world, lines of authority are so tangled and priorities are so low that I'm afraid some portion of loss will continue to be the order of the day.

[Grace Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent introduction to a growing new field. Already some of the links in the text no longer work showing the importance of the field in our current digitally driven world. Yet this should serve as a guide for years to come for understanding the different ways that we can curate the digital world.

[Donna]

Text for digital preservation class. Good overall.