Stewardship and curation in a digital world

Introduction In order to get a sense of what is at stake in the necessary stewardship and curation of collections, one can simply look at what is valued today. We often look to history to help us learn, grow and avoid repeating mistakes. How do we do this? We do this by consulting materials that have been passed down from age to age. The research process is one that builds on what has come before it. This process relies on the availability of content from all areas of life. These initially raw materials have been gathered, collected and preserved: they have been stewarded. It is largely due to this stewardship practice that they have survived till today. Granted, some element of serendipity has been involved in determining what survives across time but more importantly, there is human intervention. We create repositories and archives to properly house these materials. We describe and arrange these materials so that we know what we store. These activities can be described as stewardship and curation. All the traditional skills used to preserve content now apply equally – and perhaps one could argue to an even greater degree – to digital materials. If we are to avoid Terry Kuny's ‘digital dark age’ (Kuny, 1997) then we need to apply the same attention to digital materials as we do to physical ones. Therefore digital stewardship and digital curation pay homage to our efforts to preserve physical materials as well as guiding us in what we need to do for digital content. To be successful in digital curation in the 21st century one must understand the environment in which one works. This is perhaps the most difficult information to gather and understand. Knowing what your area of influence relies upon: what are the internal and external dependencies is critical to achieving success. Therefore any strategic plan needs to be based in a form of practical reality – tied to what is actually achievable given the environment and resources at hand. As will be discussed later in more detail, it is often the responsibility of individual curators (in this sense) to paint a picture for policy makers and administrators of what is needed for the proper stewardship of library materials. Learning what the issues are and how they will affect your mission is your main goal. You must ascertain a sense of the big picture.