Registration opens for new digital curation institute

Registration for a new institute designed for practitioners or would be practitioners of digital curation is now open at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "DigCCurr Professional Institute: Curation Practices for the Digital Object Lifecycle" is an opportunity for digital curation practitioners to come together for a week of intensive sessions taught by international digital curation experts.

The institute consists of one five-day session June 21-26, 2009 and a two-day follow-up session in January 2010 (one price for the two sessions). Each day of the June session will include lectures, discussion and a hands-on “lab” component. A course pack and a private, online discussion space will be provided to supplement learning and application of the material. An opening reception dinner on Sunday, break time treats and coffee and a dinner on Thursday are also included.

This institute is designed to foster skills, knowledge and community-building among professionals responsible for the curation of digital materials.

Institute instructors include:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

• Carolyn Hank
• Dr. Cal Lee
• Dr. Richard Marciano
• Dr. Helen Tibbo
• With assistance by Heather Bowden

University of Michigan:

• Dr. Nancy McGovern

University of Toronto:

• Dr. Seamus Ross

University of Cologne

• Dr. Manfred Thaler

The Institute Agenda

Monday, June 22, 2009
    - Digital curation program development
    - LAB – DRAMBORA and/or PLATTER in action

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
    - Strategies for engaging data communities
    - Characterizing, analyzing and evaluating the producer information environment
    - Submission and transfer scenarios – push and pull (illustrative examples from the Data Intensive Cyber Environments group projects)
    - Defining submission agreements and policies
    - LAB – Assessing File Format Robustness
    - Importance of infrastructure independence

Wednesday, June 24, 2009
    - Overview of the digital preservation problem
    - Managing in response to technological change
    - Characterization of digital objects
    - LAB – Creating Ingest rules in iRODS
    - From rules to trust – forms of evidence that a repository is doing the right things

Thursday, June 25, 2009
    - Access and use considerations
    - Access and user interface examples from
Data Intensive Cyber Environments
    - How and why to conduct research on digital collection needs
    - LAB – Analyzing server logs and developing strategies based on what you find
    - Returning to first principles – core professional principles that should drive digital curation

Friday, June 26, 2009
    - Overview and characterization of existing tools
    - LAB – Evaluating set of software options to support a given digital curation workflow
    - Formulating your six-month action plan - task for each individual, with instructors available to provide guidance

January 6-7, 2010
Participants in the June event will return to Chapel Hill in Januray 2010 to discuss their experiences in implementing what they have learned in their own work environments.  Participants will compare experiences, lessons learned and strategies for continuing progress.

Regular registration for both June and January sessions is $650. Registrations received after June 7, 2009 is $700.

To register, please click here.

On-campus accommodations includes five nights of a private room in a four room/two bath dorm suite on the UNC campus, with kitchen, linens and Internet access for $280.*

*We highly recommend that you choose the on-campus accommodations.

If you are a grant recipient working on a digital project, check with your program officer to request approval to use available grant funds to attend the institute.

For more information about the DigCCurr Professional Institute, please visit the Web site.

We look forward to seeing you there!