DigCurV

Digital Curator Vocational Education Europe (DigCurV) is a multilateral network funded under the European Commission's Leonardo da Vinci programme , which starts on 1st January 2011.

DigCurv will support and extend vocational training for digital curators in the library, archives, museums and cultural activities sector. It addresses the availability of training for staff to develop the skills needed for the long-term management of the digital collections that are being built up by cultural institutions as a result of the information society and the digital agenda. New jobs are emerging for digital curators across Europe and internationally, which has lead to demand for vocational training from staff and employers to enable the development of new skills.

The DigCurV consortium brings together organisations from Europe, Canada and the USA each with a strong track record of international working in the field of digital libraries and digital preservation including the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale - Nuove Tecnologie per i Beni Culturale (Italy), HATTII - the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (UK), the Long Room Hub of Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Goettingen State and University Library (Germany), Vilnius University Library (Lithuania), the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto (Canada) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (USA), with associated partners including the nestor consortium, the Digital Preservation Coalition and other institutions.

It will use the 30 months of the project to identify, analyse and profile existing training opportunities and methodologies, survey training needs in the sector identifying the key skills and competences required of digital curators. It will establish a curriculum framework from which training programmes can be developed; the curriculum will be tested and evaluated by stakeholders before publication in at least the four languages of the project. The partners will disseminate the results and activities widely and expand the network. A final conference for policy and decision makers is planned to raise awareness of the curriculum and promote its exploitation.