Digital Curation: The Emergence of a New Discipline

In the mid 1990s UK digital preservation activity concentrated on ensuring the survival of digital material – spurred on by the US report Preserving Digital Information (The Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information, 1996) and developed through JISC-funded activities. Technical developments and a maturing understanding of organisational activity and workflow saw the emphasis move to ensuring the access, use and reuse of digital materials throughout their lifecycle. Digital Curation emerged as a new discipline supported through the activities of the UK’s Digital Curation Centre and a number of EU 6 th Framework Projects. Digital Curation is now embedded in both practice and research; with the development of tools, and the foundation of a number of support units and academic educators offering training and furthering research. The International Journal of Digital Curation is an international journal committed to scholarly excellence and dedicated to the advancement of digital curation across a wide range of sectors. ISSN: 1746-8256 The IJDC is published by UKOLN at the University of Bath and is a publication of the Digital Curation Centre.