Can you trust AI with your archives? On April 2 at 5pm EDT, UMaine's Digital Curation program hosts a webinar with Sara and Ben Brumfield on blending human crowdsourcing with AI's scale and speed. Join us for a discussion of practical uses and thorny ethics!
https://blog.still-water.net/should-you-let-ai-manage-your-collection
By popular demand, UMaine's Digital Curation graduate program is once again offering two summer courses on metadata. This is your chance to learn more about how standards for describing files can improve access to libraries, archives, laboratories, and businesses—no prereqs. https://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu
Is there a faction more dangerous to the preservation of cultural heritage than the music industry? Attacking the Internet Archive because "you can listen to 78s on streaming" is laughable, esp. given Warner Brothers recent abandonment of movie collectors whose DVDs don't work anymore.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/221238/music-labels-will-regret-coming-for-the-internet-archive-sound-historian-says
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/they-curdle-like-milk-wb-dvds-from-2006-2008-are-rotting-away-in-their-cases
Nothing digital can be preserved in a box, so I'm gratified that a new generation of curators including the Tate's Val Ravaglia and MOMI's Regina Harsanyi have embraced variable media—a preservation approach that encompasses performances and installations too. https://youtu.be/ZXU1TnTS1gA?si=QrYGJRKU5DYUb_mK&t=1390
How will your organization store its records in 2035? Will the files you have now still be accessible? Head the future off at the pass by registering for our online #DigitalPreservation course, which starts 22 January https://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu
Could you recover content from a floppy, VHS tape or Flash animation? I co-teach an online course in digital preservation starting 22 January that covers nitty-gritty forensics and checksums as well as how to choose among storage, migration, or emulation https://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu
What happens when AI compresses the entire Internet into a single oracle, flattening messy outliers into streamlined approximations? Is that efficiency worth the cost? My article "Honey, AI Shrunk the Archive" is now up as a pre-print https://blog.still-water.net/ai-as-miniature-archive
NEW Journal Article: "Essential Work, Invisible Workers: The Role of Digital Curation in Covid-19 Open Science" https://www.infodocket.com/2024/11/23/journal-article-essential-work-invisible-workers-the-role-of-digital-curation-in-covid-19-open-science/ #OpenScience #digitalcuration
NEW Journal Article: “User Engagement in Digital Curation: A Systematic Review and Synthesis” https://www.infodocket.com/2024/11/08/journal-article-user-engagement-in-digital-curation-a-systematic-review-and-synthesis/ #ibraries #digitalcuration
This bonkers chart illustrates research from UMaine that no two digital curation job titles are the same https://blog.still-water.net/digital-curation-jobs-more-than-doubled-in-2022 — a conclusion reinforced by a new study from the Digital Preservation Coalition, which found over 3/4 of titles were unique https://www.dpconline.org/docman/digital-preservation/labour-market/3362-dpc-labourmarketanalysisreport2024/file
Latest issues of JeSLIB has just dropped; a special issue exploring research of -- and applied action within -- research #data management, #FAIR, data #curation, and other related animals. Worth dipping in, if it's your thang...
https://publishing.escholarship.umassmed.edu/jeslib/issue/61/info/ #JeSLIB #ResearchData #FAIRdata #OpenData #OpenResearch #OpenScience #DigitalCuration #repositories
The advent of generative AI could change transforms the role of the archive into something dramatically different than it had just a few years ago. Here's a 7-minute video I made for my digital curation students on how this could play out https://youtu.be/rQ54XZREStI
How would you feel if someone used AI to post under your name online? Ask Christina Warren or any of the other bloggers for defunct platforms whose name and AI-generated photo are now attached without their permission to AI-generated articles.
Digital preservationists worried the Internet would become an online graveyard. But it's starting to look more like a zombie apocalypse.
Artists can use AI for so much more than kitschy stock photos. Watch this webinar recording of digital trailblazer Christiane Paul describing how artists explore the boundaries and blind spots of artificial intelligence—From Harold Cohen’s drawing machines from the 60s to Ubermorgan’s AI that builds an exhibition from scratch.
https://digitalcuration.umaine.edu/teleconferences/dig_paul_teleconf_2024.html
How are traditional expectations of authorship, copyright, and provenance buckling under stress from AI? Join this Tuesday 4:30pm EDT conversation from @DigitCurator with Christiane Paul, probably the best-known name in digital curation, who's explored these questions for over a decade https://blog.still-water.net/digital-curation-in-the-shadow-of-ai
Need a deeper dive into metadata? This summer we're offering not 1, but 2 separate sections of our popular online course taught by @novomancy running from 28 May to 5 July and 8 July to 16 August. Take one course or enroll in the grad certificate at https://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu
The 2023 #DigitalCuration #Job titles are in! Digital Archivist was victorious again
but not by much at 4%. Close behind were newcomers Data Services Librarian and Digital Scholarship Librarian. Past winners like Records & Information Management Specialist seem to have died out
Just in time for the new year, here's a job for a "Digital Curator" at the prestigious Thoma Foundation in Dallas
https://thomafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Thoma-Foundation-Digital-Curator-Dallas.pdf
The 21st century is almost a quarter over! Isn't that terrifying? Even more terrifying if your library, archive, or museum is still stuck in the previous century. Our online courses teach the digital skills necessary to bring your collection into the 21st
News of a cyberattack taking down the most prominent collection management software used in #GLAM will not surprise anyone who's heard my rant about cultural heritage leaders snowed by promises of "enterprise level solutions." I've tried in the past to get this vendor to make its structure more flexible without success. Monoculture breeds brittleness.
