# data[].attributes.body
Good digital curators listen to what is being said all over social media, as well as who is saying it. (2017)
They have the "ability to select the most effective digital tools and to use them fluently" (2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is digital curation?
Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content.

Where did digital curation come from?
In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities. The term is sometimes used to refer to the preservation and archiving of digital materials. For the purposes of this piece, the focus is on curation as a creative process; the bringing together of a tapestry of digital artefacts to construct new meaning or provide alternative perspectives.

The practice of digital curation emerged as a response to the dramatic growth of digital content published on the Internet. This digital overload - a result of participatory web 2.0 culture in which the tools to create and publish information are readily available to all - has generated a tidal wave of content (Rosenbaum 2011). This infographic produced by Intel estimates that a staggering 1.57GB of global IP data is transferred on the Internet every minute.

The value of the digital curator is his/her ability to scour this content and transform aggregated information into something new - constructing and reconstructing information to create new knowledge and promote/support learning. This emerging role is one of increasing value within news media, where sifting through social media and validating the reliability of sources is paramount, and in other industries - such as public relations and marketing - where this role is used as a tool to manage content.

In higher education, the movement towards personalised learning; the increasing popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach; the increasing numbers of students and faculty who are digitally fluent and have their own personal learning networks (PLN); and a drive towards self-directed learning create an environment in which the skills of personal knowledge management and digital curation become increasingly essential 21st-century competencies.

How does digital curation work?
We are all familiar with the amount of uncontextualised data we receive from a straightforward Google search; a multiplicity of videos, websites, blogs, research papers, news media, tweets, etc. with varying degrees of relevancy for our purposes. Within this context, the digital curator is someone who can navigate the complexity of this information and find the relevant material for their purposes; who identifies patterns; groups and contextualises information to create new meaning; and who shares this with a wider audience.

The Digital Curation Centre provide a data curation model.

Watch this video which asks 'what is curation?' And discusses the subject as a creative practice within a digital context:

See: https://vimeo.com/38524181

Digital curation is a digital literacy and requires a subset of key skills. Among these is social listening; the process of listening to what is being said across multiple channels and who is saying it. In addition, the ability to select the most effective digital tools and to use them fluently enables both the listening process and the sharing of information.

Popular tools include Scoop.it, Pearltrees and Pintrest. Users collect resources they would recommend to others. A typical comparison of features is available here.
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/curation-platforms-amplify-knowledge-plaza-storify
Curation tools often provide features to search on the users behalf in addition to individual recommendations made directly by the curator. A curator would identify key words or phrases and the curation service may make recommendations for approval by filtering RSS feeds of other providers; this speeds up the process of discovery. Curators then add commentary on the curated item to contextualise it in their collection. Curated collections are often followed by other curators or general users who can take advantage of the filtering that has been done on their behalf.

Examples: Scoop.it curations for web articles

Image curations representing various media types

Mixed media type examples based on a topic

Sector Snapshot

Where is digital curation currently being used and how?
Digital curation is an emergent pedagogy and there are pockets of innovative practice within higher education (HE).

A team from Curtin University's School of Economics and Finance, in Australia, have used digital curation as pedagogical tool within their blended learning strategy. Formally assessed digital curation activities were integrated into a 'flipped' 13-week course where there were working as course facilitators. Digital curation activities enhanced engagement and improved preparation ahead of guest lectures, as evidenced by the quality of questions posed to speakers. Information-sharing and social learning were driven by the curation activities and improvements in critical thinking, analytical and research skills were noted. The Curtin team is using the data collected from this initial project to expand the reach of digital curation across the University (Ostashewski et al. 2014).

At Emerson College in Boston, a team of researchers is exploring digital curation as a core digital literacy. A sample group of 47 students was asked to curate digital essays using the social platform Storify (Storify is a social network for creating stories and timelines from sites such as twitter and Facebook). These were then analysed with initial results indicating an improvement in reflective learning outcomes (Mihailidis and Cohen 2013).

Are you using digital curation in your practice? We would like to hear how you are using it. Share your practice with us at @HEAtoZ #HEAtoZ.

What are the potential benefits of digital curation?
Curation is not a new academic method - the selection and framing of information has always been a core component of academic practice and student learning (Mihailidas and Cohen 2013). Digital curation, the alignment of curation with digital technology and participatory culture, is new and innovative, and provides opportunity for critical inquiry, a platform to demonstrate interpretative and creative abilities, and the potential for both faculty and students to develop digital literacies.

Digital curation can be used to teach about information creation; bias and the framing of sources; analysing and evaluating the credibility of sources; social listening; storytelling; appreciating the diversity of online voices and creative expression online.

There is also great benefit in using the curatorial process as a form of personal knowledge management (PKM). Faculty and students might use PKM methodology to make sense of online material and to guide their choice of tools in capturing and sharing it.

Getting Started

How do I get started with digital curation?
The Seek, Sense, Share Framework is an accessible way to start thinking about digital curation from the perspective of personal knowledge mastery and for integrating some of the digital tools available.

Seek - How do I find information? How can I be a social listener?
Finding resources is dominated by the major search engines but many users do not know how to get the best from them. Familiarise yourself with the advanced search options or search expressions to isolate your potential curations.
Utilise 'feeds' of information from sites/communities of interest. Google can be used to create 'alerts' of specific queries which are then fed into your email or preferred news reader.

If you want to try some social listening why not use Twitter to follow some interesting conversations. Identify where the conversations are happening and who the key players are. If you find it a challenge to follow multiple people and topic conversations at once, use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organise the conversations for you.

Sense - How do I make sense of information? How might I contextualise it?

Make sense of the information you have pulled together by reflecting on it. This might be a short comment in the curation tool you have selected, or perhaps write a blog as part of this reflective or sense-making process. Use your blog to make new connections between pieces of information and to contextualise your thoughts. Provide links and attribute your sources. Use a tool like Flipboard to aggregate your information, annotate and contextualise it. Ensure your curation has a unique viewpoint to attract followers who seek an evaluated and qualified source.

Share - How do I share my knowledge, ideas and experiences? How might I foster and use personal learning networks for this purpose?

Share your ideas and resources with your personal learning networks and encourage conversation and debate. Publish your curated collection using an appropriate service. Recommend the RSS feed of these articles so others can consume it in the tool of their choice. (See https://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss)

(Based on the Seek-Sense-Share model by Harold Jarche.

Have a go, use some of the tools, and then start to think about how you might use digital pedagogies to inform your learning design.

What should I expect if I try this approach?
The activity of digital curation complements blended-learning and flipped-learning approaches and works most seamlessly where there is a Bring your own device (BYOD) strategy in place. There will be a range of digital competencies within any classroom and closing this gap, that is, teaching digital literacies and meeting topic-specific objectives can be a challenge. The benefits of digital curation activities are realised when they are led and structured by faculty who are digitally fluent and confident that they can integrate digital pedagogies (including digital curation) into course design.

Next Steps

Where can I learn more about digital curation?
Browse curated collections from the example providers given earlier.

Sign up with a leading provider and explore the tools for gathering content and allowing you to filter, enhance or qualify it.

Listen to, and join the conversation by following this hashtag on Twitter:

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

You can also find out more about Digital Curation through the Digital Curation centre
What other topics might I find interesting?
Talk and Share

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is digital curation? Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content. Where did digital curation come from? In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities.

# data[].attributes.body
Pearltrees is a place to organize, explore and share everything you’re interested in.  You can save web pages, files, photos or notes and organize them, as well as explore amazing collections that relate to your interests.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pearltrees is a place to organize everything you're interested in. It lets you organize, explore and share everything you like.

# data[].attributes.body
Tumblr is a collection of blogs, with topics ranging from beauty, to popular culture, to sport and fitness and more. People reblog posts and add their own content while customising their blog to keep each unique.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tumblr. Pure effervescent enrichment. Old internet energy. Home of the Reblogs. All the art you never knew you needed. All the fandoms you could wish for. Enough memes to knock out a moderately-sized mammal. Add to it or simply scroll through and soak it up.

# data[].attributes.body
There is now so much content on the internet, but a digital curator can wade through the content and reconstruct the information they find to create new knowledge. This skill is used in many professions, such as marketing, and public relations of news companies. (2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is digital curation?
Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content.

Where did digital curation come from?
In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities. The term is sometimes used to refer to the preservation and archiving of digital materials. For the purposes of this piece, the focus is on curation as a creative process; the bringing together of a tapestry of digital artefacts to construct new meaning or provide alternative perspectives.

The practice of digital curation emerged as a response to the dramatic growth of digital content published on the Internet. This digital overload - a result of participatory web 2.0 culture in which the tools to create and publish information are readily available to all - has generated a tidal wave of content (Rosenbaum 2011). This infographic produced by Intel estimates that a staggering 1.57GB of global IP data is transferred on the Internet every minute.

The value of the digital curator is his/her ability to scour this content and transform aggregated information into something new - constructing and reconstructing information to create new knowledge and promote/support learning. This emerging role is one of increasing value within news media, where sifting through social media and validating the reliability of sources is paramount, and in other industries - such as public relations and marketing - where this role is used as a tool to manage content.

In higher education, the movement towards personalised learning; the increasing popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach; the increasing numbers of students and faculty who are digitally fluent and have their own personal learning networks (PLN); and a drive towards self-directed learning create an environment in which the skills of personal knowledge management and digital curation become increasingly essential 21st-century competencies.

How does digital curation work?
We are all familiar with the amount of uncontextualised data we receive from a straightforward Google search; a multiplicity of videos, websites, blogs, research papers, news media, tweets, etc. with varying degrees of relevancy for our purposes. Within this context, the digital curator is someone who can navigate the complexity of this information and find the relevant material for their purposes; who identifies patterns; groups and contextualises information to create new meaning; and who shares this with a wider audience.

The Digital Curation Centre provide a data curation model.

Watch this video which asks 'what is curation?' And discusses the subject as a creative practice within a digital context:

See: https://vimeo.com/38524181

Digital curation is a digital literacy and requires a subset of key skills. Among these is social listening; the process of listening to what is being said across multiple channels and who is saying it. In addition, the ability to select the most effective digital tools and to use them fluently enables both the listening process and the sharing of information.

Popular tools include Scoop.it, Pearltrees and Pintrest. Users collect resources they would recommend to others. A typical comparison of features is available here.
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/curation-platforms-amplify-knowledge-plaza-storify
Curation tools often provide features to search on the users behalf in addition to individual recommendations made directly by the curator. A curator would identify key words or phrases and the curation service may make recommendations for approval by filtering RSS feeds of other providers; this speeds up the process of discovery. Curators then add commentary on the curated item to contextualise it in their collection. Curated collections are often followed by other curators or general users who can take advantage of the filtering that has been done on their behalf.

Examples: Scoop.it curations for web articles

Image curations representing various media types

Mixed media type examples based on a topic

Sector Snapshot

Where is digital curation currently being used and how?
Digital curation is an emergent pedagogy and there are pockets of innovative practice within higher education (HE).

A team from Curtin University's School of Economics and Finance, in Australia, have used digital curation as pedagogical tool within their blended learning strategy. Formally assessed digital curation activities were integrated into a 'flipped' 13-week course where there were working as course facilitators. Digital curation activities enhanced engagement and improved preparation ahead of guest lectures, as evidenced by the quality of questions posed to speakers. Information-sharing and social learning were driven by the curation activities and improvements in critical thinking, analytical and research skills were noted. The Curtin team is using the data collected from this initial project to expand the reach of digital curation across the University (Ostashewski et al. 2014).

At Emerson College in Boston, a team of researchers is exploring digital curation as a core digital literacy. A sample group of 47 students was asked to curate digital essays using the social platform Storify (Storify is a social network for creating stories and timelines from sites such as twitter and Facebook). These were then analysed with initial results indicating an improvement in reflective learning outcomes (Mihailidis and Cohen 2013).

Are you using digital curation in your practice? We would like to hear how you are using it. Share your practice with us at @HEAtoZ #HEAtoZ.

What are the potential benefits of digital curation?
Curation is not a new academic method - the selection and framing of information has always been a core component of academic practice and student learning (Mihailidas and Cohen 2013). Digital curation, the alignment of curation with digital technology and participatory culture, is new and innovative, and provides opportunity for critical inquiry, a platform to demonstrate interpretative and creative abilities, and the potential for both faculty and students to develop digital literacies.

Digital curation can be used to teach about information creation; bias and the framing of sources; analysing and evaluating the credibility of sources; social listening; storytelling; appreciating the diversity of online voices and creative expression online.

There is also great benefit in using the curatorial process as a form of personal knowledge management (PKM). Faculty and students might use PKM methodology to make sense of online material and to guide their choice of tools in capturing and sharing it.

Getting Started

How do I get started with digital curation?
The Seek, Sense, Share Framework is an accessible way to start thinking about digital curation from the perspective of personal knowledge mastery and for integrating some of the digital tools available.

Seek - How do I find information? How can I be a social listener?
Finding resources is dominated by the major search engines but many users do not know how to get the best from them. Familiarise yourself with the advanced search options or search expressions to isolate your potential curations.
Utilise 'feeds' of information from sites/communities of interest. Google can be used to create 'alerts' of specific queries which are then fed into your email or preferred news reader.

If you want to try some social listening why not use Twitter to follow some interesting conversations. Identify where the conversations are happening and who the key players are. If you find it a challenge to follow multiple people and topic conversations at once, use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organise the conversations for you.

Sense - How do I make sense of information? How might I contextualise it?

Make sense of the information you have pulled together by reflecting on it. This might be a short comment in the curation tool you have selected, or perhaps write a blog as part of this reflective or sense-making process. Use your blog to make new connections between pieces of information and to contextualise your thoughts. Provide links and attribute your sources. Use a tool like Flipboard to aggregate your information, annotate and contextualise it. Ensure your curation has a unique viewpoint to attract followers who seek an evaluated and qualified source.

Share - How do I share my knowledge, ideas and experiences? How might I foster and use personal learning networks for this purpose?

Share your ideas and resources with your personal learning networks and encourage conversation and debate. Publish your curated collection using an appropriate service. Recommend the RSS feed of these articles so others can consume it in the tool of their choice. (See https://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss)

(Based on the Seek-Sense-Share model by Harold Jarche.

Have a go, use some of the tools, and then start to think about how you might use digital pedagogies to inform your learning design.

What should I expect if I try this approach?
The activity of digital curation complements blended-learning and flipped-learning approaches and works most seamlessly where there is a Bring your own device (BYOD) strategy in place. There will be a range of digital competencies within any classroom and closing this gap, that is, teaching digital literacies and meeting topic-specific objectives can be a challenge. The benefits of digital curation activities are realised when they are led and structured by faculty who are digitally fluent and confident that they can integrate digital pedagogies (including digital curation) into course design.

Next Steps

Where can I learn more about digital curation?
Browse curated collections from the example providers given earlier.

Sign up with a leading provider and explore the tools for gathering content and allowing you to filter, enhance or qualify it.

Listen to, and join the conversation by following this hashtag on Twitter:

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

You can also find out more about Digital Curation through the Digital Curation centre
What other topics might I find interesting?
Talk and Share

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is digital curation? Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content. Where did digital curation come from? In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities.

# data[].attributes.body
"Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualizing, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content." (2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is digital curation?
Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content.

Where did digital curation come from?
In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities. The term is sometimes used to refer to the preservation and archiving of digital materials. For the purposes of this piece, the focus is on curation as a creative process; the bringing together of a tapestry of digital artefacts to construct new meaning or provide alternative perspectives.

The practice of digital curation emerged as a response to the dramatic growth of digital content published on the Internet. This digital overload - a result of participatory web 2.0 culture in which the tools to create and publish information are readily available to all - has generated a tidal wave of content (Rosenbaum 2011). This infographic produced by Intel estimates that a staggering 1.57GB of global IP data is transferred on the Internet every minute.

The value of the digital curator is his/her ability to scour this content and transform aggregated information into something new - constructing and reconstructing information to create new knowledge and promote/support learning. This emerging role is one of increasing value within news media, where sifting through social media and validating the reliability of sources is paramount, and in other industries - such as public relations and marketing - where this role is used as a tool to manage content.

In higher education, the movement towards personalised learning; the increasing popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach; the increasing numbers of students and faculty who are digitally fluent and have their own personal learning networks (PLN); and a drive towards self-directed learning create an environment in which the skills of personal knowledge management and digital curation become increasingly essential 21st-century competencies.

How does digital curation work?
We are all familiar with the amount of uncontextualised data we receive from a straightforward Google search; a multiplicity of videos, websites, blogs, research papers, news media, tweets, etc. with varying degrees of relevancy for our purposes. Within this context, the digital curator is someone who can navigate the complexity of this information and find the relevant material for their purposes; who identifies patterns; groups and contextualises information to create new meaning; and who shares this with a wider audience.

The Digital Curation Centre provide a data curation model.

Watch this video which asks 'what is curation?' And discusses the subject as a creative practice within a digital context:

See: https://vimeo.com/38524181

Digital curation is a digital literacy and requires a subset of key skills. Among these is social listening; the process of listening to what is being said across multiple channels and who is saying it. In addition, the ability to select the most effective digital tools and to use them fluently enables both the listening process and the sharing of information.

Popular tools include Scoop.it, Pearltrees and Pintrest. Users collect resources they would recommend to others. A typical comparison of features is available here.
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/curation-platforms-amplify-knowledge-plaza-storify
Curation tools often provide features to search on the users behalf in addition to individual recommendations made directly by the curator. A curator would identify key words or phrases and the curation service may make recommendations for approval by filtering RSS feeds of other providers; this speeds up the process of discovery. Curators then add commentary on the curated item to contextualise it in their collection. Curated collections are often followed by other curators or general users who can take advantage of the filtering that has been done on their behalf.

Examples: Scoop.it curations for web articles

Image curations representing various media types

Mixed media type examples based on a topic

Sector Snapshot

Where is digital curation currently being used and how?
Digital curation is an emergent pedagogy and there are pockets of innovative practice within higher education (HE).

A team from Curtin University's School of Economics and Finance, in Australia, have used digital curation as pedagogical tool within their blended learning strategy. Formally assessed digital curation activities were integrated into a 'flipped' 13-week course where there were working as course facilitators. Digital curation activities enhanced engagement and improved preparation ahead of guest lectures, as evidenced by the quality of questions posed to speakers. Information-sharing and social learning were driven by the curation activities and improvements in critical thinking, analytical and research skills were noted. The Curtin team is using the data collected from this initial project to expand the reach of digital curation across the University (Ostashewski et al. 2014).

At Emerson College in Boston, a team of researchers is exploring digital curation as a core digital literacy. A sample group of 47 students was asked to curate digital essays using the social platform Storify (Storify is a social network for creating stories and timelines from sites such as twitter and Facebook). These were then analysed with initial results indicating an improvement in reflective learning outcomes (Mihailidis and Cohen 2013).

Are you using digital curation in your practice? We would like to hear how you are using it. Share your practice with us at @HEAtoZ #HEAtoZ.

What are the potential benefits of digital curation?
Curation is not a new academic method - the selection and framing of information has always been a core component of academic practice and student learning (Mihailidas and Cohen 2013). Digital curation, the alignment of curation with digital technology and participatory culture, is new and innovative, and provides opportunity for critical inquiry, a platform to demonstrate interpretative and creative abilities, and the potential for both faculty and students to develop digital literacies.

Digital curation can be used to teach about information creation; bias and the framing of sources; analysing and evaluating the credibility of sources; social listening; storytelling; appreciating the diversity of online voices and creative expression online.

There is also great benefit in using the curatorial process as a form of personal knowledge management (PKM). Faculty and students might use PKM methodology to make sense of online material and to guide their choice of tools in capturing and sharing it.

Getting Started

How do I get started with digital curation?
The Seek, Sense, Share Framework is an accessible way to start thinking about digital curation from the perspective of personal knowledge mastery and for integrating some of the digital tools available.

Seek - How do I find information? How can I be a social listener?
Finding resources is dominated by the major search engines but many users do not know how to get the best from them. Familiarise yourself with the advanced search options or search expressions to isolate your potential curations.
Utilise 'feeds' of information from sites/communities of interest. Google can be used to create 'alerts' of specific queries which are then fed into your email or preferred news reader.

If you want to try some social listening why not use Twitter to follow some interesting conversations. Identify where the conversations are happening and who the key players are. If you find it a challenge to follow multiple people and topic conversations at once, use a tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organise the conversations for you.

Sense - How do I make sense of information? How might I contextualise it?

Make sense of the information you have pulled together by reflecting on it. This might be a short comment in the curation tool you have selected, or perhaps write a blog as part of this reflective or sense-making process. Use your blog to make new connections between pieces of information and to contextualise your thoughts. Provide links and attribute your sources. Use a tool like Flipboard to aggregate your information, annotate and contextualise it. Ensure your curation has a unique viewpoint to attract followers who seek an evaluated and qualified source.

Share - How do I share my knowledge, ideas and experiences? How might I foster and use personal learning networks for this purpose?

Share your ideas and resources with your personal learning networks and encourage conversation and debate. Publish your curated collection using an appropriate service. Recommend the RSS feed of these articles so others can consume it in the tool of their choice. (See https://www.commoncraft.com/video/rss)

(Based on the Seek-Sense-Share model by Harold Jarche.

Have a go, use some of the tools, and then start to think about how you might use digital pedagogies to inform your learning design.

What should I expect if I try this approach?
The activity of digital curation complements blended-learning and flipped-learning approaches and works most seamlessly where there is a Bring your own device (BYOD) strategy in place. There will be a range of digital competencies within any classroom and closing this gap, that is, teaching digital literacies and meeting topic-specific objectives can be a challenge. The benefits of digital curation activities are realised when they are led and structured by faculty who are digitally fluent and confident that they can integrate digital pedagogies (including digital curation) into course design.

Next Steps

Where can I learn more about digital curation?
Browse curated collections from the example providers given earlier.

Sign up with a leading provider and explore the tools for gathering content and allowing you to filter, enhance or qualify it.

Listen to, and join the conversation by following this hashtag on Twitter:

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

You can also find out more about Digital Curation through the Digital Curation centre
What other topics might I find interesting?
Talk and Share

#digitalcuration @brainpickings @Swissmiss

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is digital curation? Digital curation is the act of finding and selecting, grouping and contextualising, preserving, maintaining, archiving and sharing digital content. Where did digital curation come from? In the 21st century the term 'curation' has developed from a description of the activity of a museum, gallery or library, to one that includes a wide range of online or digital activities.

# data[].attributes.body
Scoop. it is a publishing platform where you can create your own visually appealing magazines and can share your content on social media.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For individuals

Publish your topic page with curated content in minutes.
Distribute it automatically with your network
to build your professional brand.

For businesses

Curate, share, and read content on private hubs.
Publish on your websites and blogs, newsletters and social media.
Aggregate curated content across multiple WordPress blogs.

Trusted by 8+ million curators, business intelligence professionals & marketers

How do content curation tools work?

A powerful content engine

Scoop.it's advanced content engine monitors global sources to find and curate relevant third-party content.

With a content curation tool you'll:

Boost credibility with readers and build brand awareness

Establish thought leadership and strengthen influencer connections

Access sources ranging from mainstream media to niche publications

Create and share curated
content pages

Publish topic pages with curated content in minutes.
Share them with your networks to build your professional brand.

Create engaging web pages from the content you curate

Feed your social channels automatically with curated content

Embed your content pages in your website

Leverage curated content in templated newsletters

Monitor and share knowledge with coworkers privately

Make it easy for your team to discover, curate and share content.

Automate content monitoring

Share curated content privately with your team

Generate internal email newsletters in a few clicks

Create private curated content hubs for your team

Integrate with SSO, intranet and enterprise social networks

Publish curated content for a targeted audience

Leverage curated content: store, share, categorize and disseminate it.

Aggregate curated content on one or multiple websites

Publish content on one or multiple Wordpress blogs

Share your team content on multiple social media

Generate customized newsletter for Mailchimp or any emailing solutions

Resources to make the most of content opportunities

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Scoop.it - Content Curation Tool | Scoop.it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Scoop.it enables professionals and businesses to research and publish content through its content curation tool.

# data[].attributes.body
You can save articles, images, or anything you want to boards you create on Pinterest, collecting them together to look back on and use for ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

# data[].attributes.body
"Digital curation is the management and preservation of digital data over the long-term." (Abbot, 2008)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Published: 2 April 2008
Please cite as: Abbott, D. (2008). "What is Digital Curation?". DCC Briefing Papers: Introduction to Curation. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Handle: 1842/3362. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation

Browse the paper below or download the pdf.

1. Introduction

There is an ever-increasing amount of data being created in digital formats, through the digitisation of existing analogue information and the creation of new 'born-digital' data from the sciences, arts, and humanities sectors. As well as generating new digital data, scientists, researchers, and scholars have begun to rely on digital content created by others. These data are at risk from technological obsolescence and from the inherent fragility of digital media. Digital curation is the management and preservation of digital data over the long-term.

All activities involved in managing data from planning its creation, best practice in digitisation and documentation, and ensuring its availability and suitability for discovery and re-use in the future are part of digital curation. Digital curation can also include managing vast data sets for daily use, for example ensuring that they can be searched and continue to be readable. Digital curation is therefore applicable to a large range of professional situations from the beginning of the information life-cycle to the end; digitisers, metadata creators, funders, policy-makers, and repository managers to name a few examples.

2. Short-term Benefits and Long-term Value

Digital curation ensures the sustainability of data in the long term, however it has immediate value for data creators as well as users. Digital curation facilitates:

Persistent access to reliable digital data

Improved quality of the data itself and its research context

The use of common standards across different datasets, which in turn leads to more opportunities for cross-searching and collaboration

Authenticity checks, improving the trustworthiness of data

Ensuring data is valid as a formal record where appropriate, meaning it can function into the future as legal evidence

Exploiting initial investment by ensuring that data is available for use and re-use and protecting the financial value of information

Improved speed and range of access, data sharing and analysis opportunities, and other research benefits

Digital curation ensures long-term value by:

Preserving data and protecting it against loss and obsolescence (particularly crucial where the data is non-reproducible or extremely valuable)

Allowing continued access to data despite short-term funding or institutional changes

Encouraging re-use of data

Maximising the exploitation of digital materials cumulatively through time

Providing information about the context and provenance of data

The use of tools and services to migrate data, metadata, and other representation information into new formats to ensure it remains meaningful to users

A management infrastructure for the preservation and dissemination of data in perpetuity

3. HE/FE Perspective

" It is clear that e-learning materials, in common with other digital resources, require investment to create and exploit. These materials can be migrated, versioned, updated, reinterpreted or re-visioned to make them applicable to new teaching and learning scenarios. A better understanding is required of the value of preservation and curation methods to leverage that original investment by re-using existing resources in novel ways."

- JISC ITT: e-Learning Materials Preservation and Curation Studies , February 2008.

4. e-Science Perspective

" A coherent strategy is essential in order to establish and sustain the UK as an international leader of well-curated national data assets and computational infrastructure expertly used to shape policy, support decisions and empower research. The value of data as a foundation for wellbeing and a sustainable society must be appreciated; National resources must be more wisely directed to the collection, maintenance, widening access, analysis and exploitation of these data."

- M. Atkinson, M. P., Britton, D., Coveney, P., De Roure, D. E., Garnett, N., Geddes, N., Gurney, R., Ingram, D., Haines, K., Hughes, L., Jeffreys, P., Lyon, L. J., Osborne, I., Perrott, R., Procter, R. N. and Trefethen, A. E. (March 2008). " Century-of-Information Research - a Strategy for Research and Innovation in the Century of Information" (CIR3).

5. Issues to be Considered

Digital curation can be costly and requires a significant level of time investment and expertise. This can be problematic for smaller institutions, especially as the major advantages of digital curation are long-term and investment can take many years to bear fruit.

Digital curation is an ongoing process not a one-off action. It is a chain of activities only as strong as its weakest link. It is necessary to have the appropriate financial and policy infrastructures in place to ensure that digital curation itself can be continued over the long-term.

Best practice changes as new tools and standards are developed, and as digital media becomes increasingly complex. Digital curators must engage with technology and standards watch activities in order to keep their knowledge up to date in a quickly changing sector. In this respect, training can also form part of the activities involved in digital curation.

The responsibilities involved in digital curation can be shared across different institutions and communities and change over the life-cycle of the data, often incorporating organisational and cultural issues as well as technical ones. There is often confusion surrounding the specific roles that various stakeholders play in the digital curation life-cycle. As such, disambiguation is urgently required.

Digital curation offers a great number of opportunities for collaboration in data use, and the process itself can benefit from bringing together different expertise, contributors, and sharing the financial burden. However, these activities need to be carefully managed to ensure consistency of approach across different partners.

One of the major advantages of making digital data widely available is that it can be searched, however studies have shown that much data available online is not used due to the difficulties users have in locating datasets and searching within them. How can data from diverse, varied collections be meaningfully combined to provide faster, more accurate searching, and new research findings?

The ownership of digital data is particularly complex as creators of both digital objects and analogue originals, databases, metadata, tools for functionality and contextual information can all have rights over the materials, as can the digital curators themselves. Managing rights is a challenging and time-consuming aspect of digital curation.

Mechanisms for quality control, authentication, and validation of data should form part of digital curation.

Backup of data should not be confused with digital curation. Backups are short-term recovery solutions and do not include the wide range of activities necessary to ensure the preservation and dissemination of authentic digital objects in perpetuity.

Different disciplines use terminology in different ways which can lead to inconsistencies and/or misunderstandings between collaborators on digital curation.

6. Additional Resources

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Published: 2 April 2008 Please cite as: Abbott, D. (2008). "What is Digital Curation?". DCC Briefing Papers: Introduction to Curation. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Handle: 1842/3362. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation Browse the paper below or download the pdf.

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"Digital curation is an ongoing process." (Abbot, 2008)