Closing the Digital Curation Gap: A Grounded Framework for Providing Guidance and Education in Digital Curation

Over the past decade, a significant gap has emerged between the dramatic progress of research and development on digital curation and professional practices of archivists, librarians, and museum curators. There are many viable applications, models, strategies, and standards for long-term care of digital objects. However, many institutions are either not aware of the options or do not currently have the ability to evaluate and implement them. The Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG) project aims to provide guidance for professionals in small- to medium-sized repositories. We have elicited requirements from users through focus groups and semi-structured interviews. We are developing Digital Curation Guides to assist information professionals who are new to digital curation activities. We report on findings from the focus groups and interviews that inform the design of the guides. We also place our findings within the context of other work including the Digital Curation Centre's Digital Curation Lifecycle Model, the DigCCurr Matrix of Digital Curation Knowledge and Competencies, the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) activities, the Society of American Archivists' (SAA) Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) Certificate program, the DigCCurr Professional Institute, the European Commission-funded DigCurV training program, and the emerging CDCG Guides.