UCL Digital Humanities visit

How will history remember you…?

Wellcome Library, May 2013

Dave ThompsonDigital Curator, Wellcome Library

What’s a digital curator…?

1. If you ever find out please let me know. I’m supposed to be preserving digital stuff…

2. Day to day responsibility for 2 systems; #Goobi & Safety Deposit Box #sdb – for responsibility read ‘Fixing’.

3. Work with archivists in the acquisition & long term management of born digital stuff, i.e. problem solving.

4. Work with digitisation team on system requirements/functionality & process management, i.e. making systems do stuff better.

So, how do I spend my day…?

1. Planning. Planning. Planning. Meetings. Meetings. Meetings.

2. Project management. Deadlines. Budgets. Objectives. Reporting. Planning. Meetings.

3. Process management, how we do stuff, how can we do it better.

4. Tiny, tiny, tiny part of my time spent on actually managing data.

Why do we need to preserve data…?

1. Technical reasons, e.g. obsolescence, but also social & economic reasons.

2. Formats, media, hardware, software eventually becomes obsolete. Data remains an economic good.

3. Personal papers provide a unique insight.

4. Some data can’t be re-created at any cost, e.g. personal diaries or geophysical data.

So, I can think of

four lessons, in

no particular

order…

1. Nothing without imagination

1. The power of preservation can only be revealed if we can imagine the uses the data can be put to.

2. Data management is not an exercise in technology for its own sake.

3. There is nothing that cannot be achieved, but it takes more than computers & software.

4. Successful long term data management is about engaging with creators & consumers, with the data & with the future.

2. It’s not my job…

1. My role is to pick up where creators left off. At least for born digital material.

2. I can only work with what I’m given.

3. Responsibility for creating data that has a sustainable future lies with creators.

4. The future of the data lies in your hands. Help me out.

3. It is a quest for world domination

1. The world is now dominated by data.

2. Data creators need to understand the impact of decisions they make in creating data.

3. Long term vision & data management planning are essential if a data based resource is to have benefits.

4. Understanding how to manage data over time is the new powerbase. Grasp it.

4. Its not a technical problem...

1. Digital preservation is not a technical problem. Many technical issues already have solutions; it’s a social problem.

2. Need to engage with data creators, get them to build sustainable data sets. Need is for shared responsibility.

3. The challenge is to move digital data into the future not just intact but in context & retaining its significance as research material.

4. This makes it a social problem.

So my lessons are that…

1. Long term management of data is an opportunity to be creative & imaginative, but also to be challenged.

2. Data creators must take more responsibility in creating sustainable data sets.

3. To understand the management of data is to assume significant power.

4. The long term management of data is a social problem we all share.

‘Doesn't matter if you are Hitler, Nero or Napoleon, because archivists, librarians and historians will have the final word on your life.’Twitter, HistoryNeedsYou (RT by DavidUnderdown 20 Jan 2013.)

Thank youQuestions now, questions later…?

Dave ThompsonDigital Curator

Wellcome Library

d.thompson@wellcome.ac.uk