Paper short abstract:

Standardization is important to digital curation. We want to follow best practices so our digital archives are of high quality, safe, and sustainable, but technology changes so swiftly that standards are hard to develop. Discussions like this will help shape the future of digital cultural archives.

Paper long abstract:

Despite being a relatively new field, and one that by its very nature changes rapidly, standardization is a major concern in digital curation. As a digital archivist, I want to follow the best standards possible so that the Maine Folklife Center's (MFC) archives are digitized correctly and conserved properly. However, there are few digital practices that have been accepted as "archival standard." The best practices are concepts: duplication, checks, and migration. Technology changes so swiftly that standards for format and metadata are hard to develop.

The long-term preservation of digital material needs detailed metadata to support it. For that to be truly effective, the metadata needs to be in a standard format that doesn't rely on institutional memory. Happily, there seems to be progress in the standardization of metadata for archives. Many people use or take into consideration The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. It is used, for example, by Digital Commons, which is one of the on-line database formats the Maine Folklife Center has chosen to participate in for public access to its collections. Even within their Dublin Core based metadata, I found we needed to modify the elements to fit our needs as a cultural archive.

As Archives Manager of the MFC, I have overseen the digitizing of our collection, set digital policies, and explored a number of on-line databases. I would like to share what I learned from those experiences with the community as we work to set international standards for digital cultural archives.