Digital curation after digital extraction for data sharing

Welcome to the third issue of volume 42 of the IASSIST Quarterly (IQ 42:3, 2018). The IASSIST Quarterly presents in this issue three papers from geographically widespread countries. We call IASSIST ‘International’, so I am happy to present papers from three continents in this issue with papers from Zimbabwe, Italy and Canada. The paper 'The State of Preparedness for Digital Curation and Preservation: A Case Study of a Developing Country Academic Library' is by Phillip Ndhlovu, who works as the institutional repository librarian and liaison librarian, and Thomas Matingwina, who is a lecturer at the Department of Library and Information Service at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Modern day libraries have vast amounts of digital content and the authors noted that because these collections require very different management than the traditional paper-based materials, the new materials’ longevity is endangered. Their study assessed the state of preparedness of the NUST Library for digital curation and preservation, including the assessment of awareness, competencies, technology infrastructure, digital disaster preparedness, and challenges to digital curation and preservation. They found a lack of policies, lack of expertise by library staff, and lack of funding. You might conclude that investigating your own organization and reaching the very well known conclusion that 'we need more money!' is not so surprising. However, you have to take note that the Jeff Rothenberg statement from 1995 that 'Digital information lasts forever – or five years, whichever comes first' has not yet sunk in with politicians and administrators, who will immediately associate the term 'digital' with 'saving money'. This study shows them why this is not a valid connotation. It is a study of a single institution, and as the authors note it cannot be generalized even to other academic libraries in Zimbabwe. However, other libraries - also outside Zimbabwe - have here a good guide for making their own assessment of the digital preparedness of their institution. The second paper was - as was the paper above - presented at the IASSIST conference in 2018 and is also about the transition from media known for thousands of years to new media and digital forms. Peter Peller presented the paper 'From Paper Map to Geospatial Vector Layer: Demystifying the Process'. He is the Director of the Spatial and Numeric Data Services unit at Libraries and Cultu