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Minimum Viable Skills for Digital Collections Curator

Introduction: Open Science mission for this role

The Minimum Viable Skillset (MVS) offers a framework for describing and recognising activities and skills required for open science specialists. This MVS, for Digital Collections Curators working in GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), describes expertise required to enhance the value of digital collections, e.g. to the scholarly community and the public, while respecting rights and legitimate interests of all other stakeholders. This includes individuals or groups described by collections, researchers wishing to use them, as well as host institutions and other organisations involved in maintaining access (e.g. infrastructures, funders). 

A Digital Collections Curator supports digitisation and works with others to ensure the long-term preservation and reusability of data derived from collections. They advise and train researchers and other GLAM staff on policy, guidelines, data management plans, institutional infrastructure, and data management tools relevant to the domains that are the focus of digital collections in their institution. They provide support in planning and implementing principles for  FAIR digital objects and for decolonisation of collections, using these principles to shape data sharing practices.

Various other job titles are relevant to the role described here, e.g. Data Curator, Data Steward, or Data Manager. Expertise in digital collections curation is usually distributed among several people, drawing on internal skills and external services provided to the GLAM institution, e.g. by a Competence Centre or other provider. The appropriate distribution of expertise depends on cost and the availability of skills to meet needs. The document includes background assumptions about contextual factors that may influence these.Digital Collections Curators play a key role in the EOSC. As practitioners and advocates of Open Science, and as educators and enablers of others , they are likely to be both consumers and providers of services or resources.

Digital Collections Curator

Essential skills and competences

Each requires understanding of the context, the processes required to perform the main activities involved, and transversal competences ('soft skills') to engage with the various stakeholders.

  • Knowledge of principles relating to FAIR data, Open Science, and Open Collections, the policy and legal contexts to these principles, and strategies for implementing them in diverse GLAM institutions and domains. This includes understanding of training requirements to build the essential skills for Open Collections practices, policies and procedures, including knowledge/awareness of relevant software development.

  • Knowledge and understanding of practical steps to manage Collections as Data, to apply Open Science principles to data derived from digital collections. This includes abilities to establish and maintain good data management practices relevant to open digital collections, and to ensure data quality and long-term preservation by performing data transformation and migration, establishing processes for information security, risk management, version control, and documentation of provenance and contextual metadata about digital objects. It also includes the ability to promote the value of good data management among data producers and users, researchers, support services colleagues, and relevant committees.

  • Ability to apply FAIR principles to collections, and to other digital objects they interoperate with, including software. This includes the capability to apply standards, ontologies, infrastructure and tools for (meta)data publishing and sharing, and for managing the associated workflows. It also includes the capability to provide open access to collections.

  • Ability to establish governance processes to handle ethical and legal/ regulatory aspects of managing digital open collections in the GLAM sector. This requires understanding of processes to handle intellectual property rights, deal with personal data, and ensure the responsible reuse of digital objects, including through the decolonisation of collections. It also requires familiarity with sustainable business modeling approaches relevant to the sector, including appropriate levels of resource pooling and service coordination.

Soft/ transversal skills

  • Ability to interact positively and productively with others, e.g.when addressing audiences, moderating discussions, or collaborating in teams and networks. This includes abilities to effect agreements, reconcile, resolve problems, and provide improvement strategies with a patient, empathetic approach.

  • Exercise critical judgement, develop own assumptions, and establish a way of working based on critical thinking.

  • Ability to develop innovative, novel solutions, with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to learn. This includes abilities to obtain and synthesize information to identify and explore trends, opportunities, threats (also based on intuition and creativity); and to identify alternative paths to turn ideas into action, selecting the most appropriate approach.

  • Direct activities and tasks, establish schedules and coordinate the activities of groups and individuals to complete objectives on time and within budget.

Background Assumptions

Organisational context: Digital Collection Curators serve research teams and departments in institutions that are directly involved in the publication of collection objects or the production of research results, such as:-

  • Museums that conduct research

  • Libraries and archives

  • University collections

  • Research infrastructures

Open Science mission for this role: A Digital Collections Curator works with stakeholders to establish and manage processes to generate and maintain digital data collections with their associated metadata. They also make collections usable for research, facilitate their quality assurance, and their transformation into research outputs. The role also supports informed decisions about the openness of collections and data derived from them, for re-use in line with ethical, legal and social expectations.

Contributes to Open Science Outcomes

  • Digital collection objects are as FAIR and open as possible and as closed as necessary.

  • Opportunities for the creation of or connection to professional Open Collections networks at institutional, cross-institutional, regional, national or international level are identified.

  • Relevant competence centres with a FAIR Data and Open Collections support function are effectively used according to local needs and strategies.

  • Open Collections skills and practices are promoted and enhanced through the use of EOSC resources and services, including relevant Open Educational Resources (OER), where appropriate.

  • Collection data, metadata and related digital objects are effectively managed to ensure their suitability for archiving and sharing, and the further development of research methods appropriate to the discipline(s).

Main activities of the Digital Collections Curator

Digital Collections Curators activities include the following:

  • Identifies the needs of stakeholders and contributes to the development, implementation and monitoring of institutional policies governing research data derived from collections, together with related tools and services to support them, including through contribution to (inter)national policy development. Promotes and communicates the importance of Open Collections, FAIR and decolonisation principles at all levels within the museum or collection.

  • Monitors the capabilities of researchers to reuse open collections responsibly, and analyses trends in tools and methods that could improve the implementation of FAIR and CARE principles to support responsible reuse, providing advice on the use of disciplinary standards and ontologies to produce FAIR research outputs, and relevant (meta)data standards and contextual documentation to archive data for future reuse.

  • Supports researchersand other users of museums and collections to apply best practices in  managing data and digital obects in relevant domains, including when preparing proposals to funders, and implements these best practices in collaboration with  RDM experts and stakeholders to find effective solutions to challenges.

  • Advises and supports researchers who use GLAM collections on adopting relevant data infrastructures, innovative techniques and tools to support them, including those provided by relevant (inter)national data infrastructures and tools.

  • Assists researchers using GLAM collections to comply with laws, regulations, and policies on legal and ethical behaviour, through liaison with institutional data protection officers, legal experts, and research ethics bodies.  As a result, identifies gaps and takes action where needed to ensure ethical behaviour and awareness of the potential impact of data reuse, management and sharing on society.

  • Maintains networks of colleagues involved in research data management and research support in the GLAM sector, including by co-developing and delivering training tailored to the needs of collection users and stakeholders, and by collaborating to deliver overall institutional policies and plans.

Further Information - Open Science Skills Terms

OS skills terms match the essential skills in this MVS to competence definitions from relevant taxonomies. Terms are selected to add further information and to aid discovery of this MVS (an extended list is added at the foot of this document). Sources: European Skills, Competences and Occupations ontology (ESCO), ResearchComp, terms4FAIRskills, Center Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement.

ESCO Research Skills: Demonstrate disciplinary expertise; Manage findable accessible interoperable and reusable data; Manage intellectual property rights; Apply research ethics and scientific integrity principles in research activities; Operate open-source software; Increase the impact of science on policy and society; Interact professionally in research and professional environments.

ESCO Transversal Skills: Negotiate compromises; Respect the diversity of cultural values and norms; Maintain psychological well-being; Think critically; Think analytically; Advise others; Participate actively in civic life; Demonstrate curiosity; Approach challenges positively; Adapt to change; Lead others; Work in teams; Meet commitments; Organise information, objects and resources.

ResearchComp:  Manage research data; Develop networks; Teach in academic or vocational contexts; Promote open innovation; Promote the transfer of knowledge; Build mentor-mentee relationships.

Terms4FAIRskills: Data policy; knowledge to contextualise fair principles to domain; Service level management; Data curation; Preservation; Open access publishing; Data access risk assessment and mitigation; Information security; Securing sustainable funding; Software preservation; Metadata exposure.

CSCCE: Consultation and listening; Advocacy; Landscape analysis.

Contributors

Nikos Gänsdorfer, Angus Whyte, Clara Lines

Link to any other MVS that this MVS is based on (from those in Skills4EOSC D2.1)

Reference sources

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