Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: A View from the National Archives of Australia

Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: A View from the National Archives of Australia

Curation

Cunningham avers that digital archiving, digital curation, digital libraries, and digital museums are distinctly different functions despite the common conflation of the terms by the public. In this article, he argues that digital archiving should begin with a systematic method for capturing and preserving data before the receiving institution ingests the items. By taking a preventative approach to data loss, the digital archivist must work closely with government and business institutions as part of an information management workflow. Cunningham credits the National Australian Archives for having the foresight and initiative to propose recordkeeping standards and protocols for digital archiving, and most significantly, for asserting that digital archives should not focus their expertise on the digital object or end product. Rather, digital archivists should focus on preserving the historical context and manner in which the content was presented. By advocating the use of open source software and other standards ensuring cross-platform flexibility, the Australian archivists aligned the ideals of preservation with the performative function and accessibility of the content. Preserving the long-term accessibility and context of the items ensured greater accuracy and evidentiary value than strictly focusing on the preservation and migration of digital objects.

This paper considers similarities and differences among the concepts of digital curation, digital archives, and digital libraries. It argues that, from a recordkeeping perspective, the phrase digital archive has been misused, even hijacked, and that this misuse obscures fundamental issues associated with the capture and long-term management of archival resources. The paper also argues that digital archiving requires active archival intervention across the entire records continuum, and that, as such, the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model is deficient because it ignores the need for pre-ingest archival activity.

Cunningham, Adrian

The American Archivist

2008-09-01

Polk, Victoria

Journal Article

Cunningham, Adrian. "Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: A View from the National Archives of Australia." The American Archivist 71 (Fall/Summer 2008): 530-543.http://archivists.metapress.com/content/P0H0T68547385507

This article asserts digital archivists must become involved in the creation and management of digital data as part of the preservation workflow. It is an important reminder, that not only did the National Australian Archives present international metadata standards and protocols for preserving the presentation and context of historic items, they established a just cause for focusing on and overseeing the entire life cycle of digital content. Additionally, the article defines the skills and education needed for expanding the archivist’s responsibilities from print management to digital workflows.