Setting the Stage: Creation, Curation, & Use

Jacob NadalExecutive Director

ReCAP: The Research Collections and Preservation Consortium

Digital Directions

• Look at your shoes– or your clothes– or your phone– or computer– or your bag– or your watch– or headphones– or your glasses

– or health tracker– or your usb drive– or your tablet– or your other phone– or your e-reader– or a magazine– or any of the myriad

of things you touch and see each day.

Digital Directions

• You have these things here, now, because the world took a digital direction decades ago– Inventory management– Supply chains– Computer Aided Design and Manufacture– online marketplaces– Financial transaction processing– Parcel delivery

Digital Directions

• Look at the printed materials in your hands • They were all born digital

– Drafted in a productivity platform– Sent via email for comment– Prepared in a page layout program– Transmitted to a printer over the internet– Printed and packed– Shipped via parcel services…

• That monitor their vehicles with GPS beacons • That log physical transactions digitally

– Handed to you here because you made an electronic payment (perhaps mediated by a physical token, like a paper check)

WE CROSSED THE SPOOKY DIVIDE A LONG TIME AGO

Digital is no longer new or unusual. Digital is normal, expected.

• Analog is also normal, indeed, necessary• And all digital information has a physical form– A hole in punch card– A “pit” on a reflective disk– A swath of magnetic nanoparticles– An electron trapped in a floating gate

• And yet…

ANALOG INFORMATION NEEDS A DIGITAL COUNTERPART

Digital is how we anchor things in the present

From us to everyone

Creation, Curation, & Use

Creation

• Creation is newness: we create by putting ideas into tangible form

• For the next few days, let “create” mean “make anew”

• Creation occurs in a change of context:– Digital surrogates are new to the network – Different formats can be new for a particular use

context

Curation

• Curation is keeping in context and • Curation is adding to context.– Remembering original purpose– Investigating potential purpose

• Curation “makes anew” within the archive, and borders on interpretation

context

Curation and Use

• Making new information– Curation makes new context, through

organization, embodied in metadata– Use makes new information, through

interpretation, embodied in citation• Curation and use are interdependent

Use

• There is the use we know: this researcher uses that resource

• There is also the use we never notice: – Indexing and search rankings (digital is countable)– Reused and repurposed (digital is malleable)

• Use creates context and emerges from context

YOU ARE ABOUT TO LEARN A LOT

What do you do with all of this?

THE FIRST DAY BACK IN THE OFFICE

Some practical advice

SUSTAINABLE ACTIVITIES, OPTIMIZED OVER TIME

Preservation is progressive improvement

Just get started

• With nothing done, countless problems• With one thing done, only thousands• With a few things done, merely hundreds• With a couple projects under your belt,

there will only be a few dozen problems left

…this year.

PRESERVATION HAS GREAT JOB SECURITY. IT NEVER ENDS.

Something is always going wrong

AFTER THIS WEEK, YOU WON’T MAKE ALL THE MISTAKES...

There are thousands of problems

ONLY THE BEST MISTAKES.And you’ll know how to solve them and who can help

THANK YOU.

Jacob Nadalemail: jnadal@princeton.edutwitter: @jacobnadalthis presentation: jacobnadal.com/535