Digital Curation for Information Professionals (DCIP) non-credit Certificate

• Are in or entering the library, archives, or curation field
• Would like to advance your knowledge of digital curation skills and techniques
• Would like to boost your library, archives, or curation career

We tailor projects and coursework to your experience level and goals for a customized educational experience. We teach digital curation theories and techniques in successive steps from introductory through advanced so that each level of understanding builds upon knowledge acquired in the program – creating an exciting and attainable journey that culminates in advanced skill levels. The DCIP focuses on practical applications and hands-on applied learning opportunities, giving you the tools to apply these skills directly and immediately to your career. Some of the other great benefits of our program:

• World-renowned professors who are not only experts in next-generation technologies, but are helping to design them
• Prestigious institution, ranked #2 in the USA by TheBestSchools.org and #8 by US News & World Report
• Fully online to fit your schedule
• Designed to accommodate working professionals
• 3 courses, less than one year (January – August)

“I am thrilled that I took part in this program. I was exposed to ideas and tools that help me better understand and apply concepts to my daily work life. The individuals in my cohort and the instructors made the program very worthwhile and valuable. The overall experience was great.”

“This was an excellent hands-on program!”

“I enjoyed how hands-on and practical the assignments were. Professor Marciano had a real focus on making sure we understood the tools we were using, and I feel I gained usable knowledge and experience.”

​Introduction to Digital Curation
In this 6-week introductory course, students will learn the principles for the design and implementation of long-term curation of digital data and information assets, including born-digital and digitized assets. Students will work to build a foundational framework for analyzing the technical, practical, ethical, economic, legal, social, and political factors affecting digital curation decisions.

Tools and Software for Digital Curation
This 12-week course provides ample hands-on experience in testing the application of digital curation principles in specific settings. Students will discuss the characteristics, representation, conversion, and preservation of digital objects, and work to plan for sustainability, risk mitigation, and disaster recovery. Multiple tools and software will be utilized throughout the course.

Implementing Digital Curation in the Workplace
This final 12-week capstone course provides students with an opportunity to understand the application of digital curation principles and techniques first-hand in an institutional program setting. Students who take this course will address one or more aspects of digital curation in their own organization through a project, focusing on an aspect of digital curation: design and implementation for long-term digital curation of a discrete collection; application of technologies and standards for digitization, description, and preservation of digital assets; or implementation of strategies to provide access to a digital collection.

The total cost for all three courses is: $4010

• Introduction to Digital Curation (6 weeks) – $1010
• Tools and Software for Digital Curation (12 weeks) – $1500
• Implementing Digital Curation in the Workplace (12 weeks) – $1500

Students register for courses individually. Those who complete all three will receive a certificate of completion.

Registration is now open! Please visit the College of Information Studies’ Open Learning page to register. The non-credit certificate consists of three courses. You can register for all three now if you would like, or register/pay before the first day of each course. Registration for the first course, Introduction to Digital Curation, will be open until the first day of class (January 8, 2024). Similarly, registration for Tools and Software will be open until February 26, 2024, and registration for Implementing Digital Curation will be open until May 27, 2024. Because the courses build on each other, you MUST successfully complete the Introduction to Digital Curation course to take Tools and Software.

There is no application process for this non-credit certificate. If you have concerns about the skills or background needed to be successful in these courses, please contact ischooldcip@umd.edu or the certificate’s Director, Dr. Richard Marciano (marciano@umd.edu). Please be aware that you will not have access to the course content until the course’s start date. These courses are online and asynchronous.

2023 Cohort

• Synthetic Data and Generative AI: An Interactive Learning Experience
• Digital Preservation and Legacy File Formats
• Buried While Black– Payne Cemetery: The Disinterment of a HIstorically Black Cemetery in Washington, DC
• Exploring Indexing Methods for Handwritten Text
• Columbia MD Archives Digital Curation Manual: Balancing Legacy and Current Standards
• Machine Learning at the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)

2022 Cohort

• A Data-Driven Approach to Reparative Description at the University of Chicago
• MKULTRA: A Map of the CIA’s Medical Experiments and Torture
• Processing Born-Digital Media in Archival Collections at the Archives of American Art
• The Buildings That Shaped Us: A virtual tour through York House School building history

2021 Cohort

• Old Data, New Data, New Perspectives: Enriching Historical Data [Urban Renewal in Asheville, NC, 1965-1980]
• Global Morsel: Adventures of a Food Nomad [U.S. Farmers Markets]
• From Obsolete to Accessible [Adding the LMLO to the Cntus Databases]
• Re-Representing the Historical St. Anne’s Cemetery in Annapolis, MD
• Henry Morgenthau Jr. Holocaust Index Project [Diary Databases & Jupyter Notebooks]
• Adventures in Humanities Data [Curation with Digital El Diario]
• Titanic Passenger List Project
• Legacy of Slavery Runaway Ads

2020 Cohort

• “Using Computational Methods to Create a Finding Aid for All Editions of the FDA’s Bacteriological Analytical Manual (BAM)”
• “Artwork and Artifact Donation Metadata Project”
• “Global Landslides Catalog – Using Data Cleanup and Visualization Software to Create a Tableau Story”
• “FDR Morgenthau Collections Holocaust Collections”
• “Data Story of the IMF COVID-19 Financial Assistance to Countries”
• “Digital Curation for Federal Statistical Data”
• “Creating a Web Archive for the Blogs of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives of the American Institute of Physics (AIP)”
• “Digital Curation as Instructional Technology”
• “Digital Systems Framework”
• “Software Release Management Support for Electronic Health Records for the DoD and VA”
• “Plotting the Past for St. Anne’s Cemetery in Annapolis, MD”

2019 Cohort

• “Exploring Digital Curation Tools Using Fire Department Incident Data”
• [Using three open-source digital curation tools: QGIS, Gephi OpenRefine]
• “Data Lifecycle Management Driving the Data Lifecycle for Mission Advantage”
• [Accountability for positively embracing and demonstrating the organization’s values, both individually and collectively]
• “Audio file archive for a non-profit corporation”
• [Non-profits often have financial constraints and rely upon volunteer labor. The archiving / curating workflows must be clearly articulated and delegated to the appropriate individuals or teams.]
• “Digitization of Special Collections”
• [Research Library Principles and Policy for Digital Content]
• “Getting a Handle on Social Media Records Management”
• [A Guide for Federal Agencies (Proof of Concept)]

2016/2017 Cohort

• “Creating a General Procedure for Electronic Records Transfers”
  [Topics: Maryland State Archives, e-transfers]
• “Assessing Digital Curation and Preservation Readiness”
  [Topics: Digital Preservation Capability Maturity Model]
• ​”Visualizing MARC Data in a Graph Database: American Show Tunes 1940-1945″
  [Topics: Graph database, MARC, Neo4j, NoSQL]
• “Assessing the Usability of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Archival Description”
  [Topics: OCR, Gate/Annie, OpenRefine, StanfordNLP, Python Regular Expressions]
• “Keeping Electronic Records: A Long-Term Strategy for the National Institutes of Health”
  [Topics: Policy, System planning, Access procedures]
• “Adding Structured Data to the NLM Digital Repository to Enhance Search Results”
  [Topics: Schema.org ontology, JSON-LD linked data, XSLT, MARCXML]

2015/2016 Cohort

• “21st Century Online Exhibits: Recommendations for the NIST Virtual Museum”
  [Topics: CONTENTdm, Google Cultural Institute, Omeka]
• “Providing Access to Vice Presidential Digital Photographs”
  [Topics: Review, description, and access to Presidential Records]
• “Strategies for Managing and Visualizing Data Across Multiple Institutions”
  [Topics: Metadata crosswalk, visualization]
• “Improving Digital Preservation for the CHF’s Oral History Collection”
  [Topics: Archivematica, Hydra, BagIt]
• “File Appraisal Toolset (FAT): Summary, Analysis, Visualization”
  [Topics: Data extraction, visual analytics]

Other Projects

• “Normalizing Filenames Non-Destructively”