Digital Curator Vocational Education Europe Project

DigCurV, a project funded by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci programme to establish a curriculum framework for vocational training in digital curation launched today.

Europe’s digital sector has seen strong growth in recent years. The pace of development and change in the information technology sector presents challenges to cultural institutions responsible for management and long-term preservation of digital collections. Ensuring that staff gain access to the necessary training is a challenge that institutions face. A Market and Trend Analysis Report completed by DigitalPreservationEurope shows that digital preservation is becoming one of the main strategic priorities for institutions – they are increasingly aware that digital resources are fragile and that they are at risk.

DigCurV will address the availability of vocational training for digital curators in the library, archive, museum and cultural heritage sectors needed to develop new skills that are essential for the long-term management of digital collections.

The thirty-month project will identify, analyse and profile existing training opportunities and methodologies, survey training needs in the sector, while identifying the key skills and competences required of digital curators. It will establish a curriculum framework from which training programmes can be developed in future. The curriculum will be tested and evaluated by stakeholders during the project. Results will be disseminated widely culminating in a final conference for policy and decision makers to raise awareness of the curriculum and promote its exploitation.

DigCurV brings together organisations from Europe, Canada and the USA with a strong track record of international work in the field of digital libraries and digital preservation.