Preservation Services at Dartmouth College: DigCCurr Professional Institute

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

DigCCurr Professional Institute

EAT MOR CHIKIN
DigCCurr* Professional Institute is an IMLS funded program of the School of Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the past three years Professors Helen Tibbo and Cal Lee, along with other internationally recognized experts, have hosted a one week professional development class on the theory and practice of digitial curation for the digital object lifecycle.

I was a student in the May 2011 session and it was an amazing week!

There were about thirty of us representing a broad range of organizations (university, government, and business archives; academic libraries; museums; historical societies) and a wide range of responsibilities (digital managers, catalogers, archivists, preservation librarians, directors, access services librarians). Each day was filled with lectures, hands-on labs, and discussion.

Manfred Thaller gave an overview of the PLANETS software and a tool to stimulate digital aging. It was a lot of fun to see how far you could corrupt a file and still get a usable document -- and at the same time discover file formats that need very little change to be un-openable.
Nancy McGovern spoke about OAIS and the need for digital curation program development.
Seamus Ross walked us through the DRAMBORA audit tool.

At the end of the week we were assigned to develop a project based on what we had learned at DigCCurr and implement the project during the next six months. Come January 2012 we will meet again in Chapel Hill to report on our projects, celebrate our successes, and console one another on imperfect implementations.

My project is to use the DRAMBORA tool for a risk assessment of our digital preservation policy. I'll post my experiences with the tool as the work moves forward.

Two other items related to DigCCurr:

-One of the program goals is to develop a community of digital currators. To that end Professors Tibbo and Lee have developed the Digital Curation Exchange. The DCE is a web based community open to anyone interested in digital curation; DigCCurr uses it as a home base for students to share information, however, anyone may join. If you haven't visited the site take a few minutes and look it over.

-Our class attended a Durham Bulls Baseball game and I discovered a new fried food: potato chips on a stick.

*Pronounced dij-seeker

Written by Barb Sagraves

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Contributors

Deborah Howe Is the Collections Conservator at Dartmouth College Library. She's been involved in the book community for over 20 years. She is a member of the Guild of Book Workers and teaches classes in the Book Arts program.

Ryland Ianelli Is a cartoonist and Project Specialist in the Dartmouth Preservation Services department. He graduated from Reed College with a BA in Art History in 2008 and, more recently, from the Center for Cartoon Studies with an MFA in Cartooning in 2010. In addition to his work in Preservation and the Digital Production Unit, he is currently drawing and writing for various independently published comics and anthologies.

Barb Sagraves has been head of Preservation Services since its creation in 1995. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan SLIS program, has an MA in Medieval History from Michigan State University, and a BA in History from the University of Oklahoma. In her role as department head, Barb has overall responsibility for the preservation program and policies at Dartmouth College Library and is in charge of the Book Arts Program.

Jenny Mullins has been the Digital Preservation Librarian for Dartmouth College Library since May of 2014. Prior to coming to Dartmouth, she preserved video and audio collections, helped build a digital repository and worked in book and paper conservation labs. Jenny is a member of ALA and co-chair of the Preservation Metadata Interest Group for 2015-17.