Fall 2023 Syllabus

Version 10.2

DIG 500 is both an introduction to essential concepts in the field and a practicum in the first phase of the curation workflow, namely the acquisition of digital material. The class surveys the variety of digital artifacts that we consciously or unconsciously create and consume today, with a focus on how to collect and manage digitized and born-digital artifacts and their related data. Students learn technical skills such as how to digitize analog documents, photographs, and videos, as well as curatorial knowledge such as how selection criteria vary as a function of type of institution (archives v. libraries v. museums v. laboratories) and field (art v. archeology v. astrophysics). The course also reviews methods for ensuring the ongoing integrity of the artifact and laws governing the acquisition and use of intellectual property, such as how copyright extends to images, editions, and future versions of a work. 3 credits. No prerequisites.

Skills introduced include: 2d and 3d scanning Accessing open data Collecting born-digital material Crowdsourcing content and metadata Designing a database Digitizing analog material Drawing a database schema Finding shareable media Making your media shareable Putting a collection online with Omeka Understanding generative AI Understanding copyright Using generative AI for curation Visualizing data

Logistics and policies
Week 1: What Is Digital Curation?
Week 2: Challenges of Digital Curation
Week 3: Digitization
Week 4: Normalization
Week 5: Digital Repositories
Week 6: Crowdsourcing
Week 7: Virtual and Physical Facsimiles
Week 8: Big data and visualization
Week 9: Access (databases)
Week 10: Access 2 (exhibitions)
Week 11: Access 3 (sharing)
Week 12: Generative AI
Week 13: Final project
Week 14: Final project (continued)