The Digital Curation program is a two-year graduate certificate, taught online, intended for professionals looking to work in museums, archives, artist studios, government offices, and anywhere that people need to manage digital files. The program walks students through the phases of managing digitized or born-digital artifacts, including acquisition, representation, access, and preservation.
 

Educational Objectives:

Students develop expertise in the following areas:

• Identifying digital objects that merit short-term or long-term preservation, from individual audiovisual files such as videotapes to complex multimedia objects such as Web sites.
• Managing and preserving selected materials, including using metadata and databases to catalog objects.
• Improving access to public material and managing access to restricted digital material.
• Theorizing and implementing ways to develop, present, and promote digital exhibitions and interpretations of this digital material, on the Web and in real or mobile space.

Required Courses:
 

1.  Acquisition (digitization, recording, selection, law)

DIG 500: Introduction to Digital Curation

2.  Representation (documentation, metadata)

DIG 510: Metadata

3.  Access (database, collection, presentation, network)

DIG 540 Digital Collections and Exhibitions

4.  Preservation (obsolescence, conservation, media formats)

DIG 550: Digital Preservation

5.  Internship (fieldwork, placement, community)

DIG 580: Digital Curation Internship

6.  Elective

An additional elective is required to complete the certificate.
 

Although the certificate is designed to be completed in two years, part-time students may choose to spread the 18 credits (6 courses) over a longer period.

To make things easier for students currently working in collecting institutions, we have designed the course as an internship that may take place in the student’s own workplace.

For up-to-date information, please visit http://DigitalCuration.UMaine.edu.