Summary of Data curation preservation issues (Budgets, costs Staffing and skills) From Edith Hope Chavula(Mlis0235)

 Summary of Data curation preservation issues (Budgets, costs Staffing and skills)

Introduction

Digital curation is the process of selecting, safeguarding, maintaining, compiling and preserving digital content. It creates, maintains and improves digital information for use in the present and the future. Digital curation is also used to overcome digital obsolescence for the long-term preservation (Feng and Richards, 2018). The term “digital curation” combines the terms “digital preservation” and “curation,” the latter of which refers to actions that enhance the worth and knowledge of digital content (Bénard and Bel, 2013). Consequently, informational organisations struggle to maintain digital assets due to interconnected vulnerabilities regarding Budget, cost, financial staffing and skills competencies (Zareef, M & Jabeen, M., 2025).

Budgets and Costs

Financial constraints, including limited access to essential tools, hinder the ability of data curators to provide advanced services (Adekoya, 2023). Because digital preservation involves maintaining long-term access, costs associated with the entire digital lifecycle, including initial creation, must be considered (Rosenthal, 2014). Furthermore, rapid technological advancements make it difficult to acquire and retain necessary staff skills, while resource limitations force managers to handle growing collections without adequate funding. Despite these challenges, determining costs is essential for creating sustainable business models, with labor representing the most significant expense across various organizational roles. Specific operational factors, such as the high cost of migrating legacy files, require strategic, aggressive data triage to manage long-term financial demands (Lively, 2018).



Staffing

Securing adequate staffing is a critical bottleneck, as most repositories suffer from severe personnel shortages and high institutional turnover rates. Because digital archives scale faster than public institutions can hire, existing personnel are routinely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming datasets. To illustrate, an economic analysis demonstrated that academic institutions consistently understaff their data repositories, leaving solitary archivists to execute complex digital curation workflows without institutional backup or administrative relief (Rosenthal, 2014).

Skills

The digital landscape requires hybrid professionals who bridge the traditional gap between archival theory and information technology. Many practitioners face technical competency gaps regarding automated ingestion scripts and cloud infrastructure. For instance, global surveys showed that librarians lack advanced software engineering capabilities needed for automated repositories (Fuhr, 2022).). Similarly, research across higher education institutions in Nigeria highlighted that while librarians possess excellent cataloging skills, they lack the core Python programming needed to curate raw data streams effectively (Agbaje, 2024).

Conclusion

According to Fan (2019), Data curation can be considered as one of the components of corporate governance. Different roles such as data supervisors, stewards, and custodians can communicate with data creators and users effectively. Data curation and preservation remain deeply vulnerable to resource constraints. Sustaining digital archives requires moving away from temporary project budgets toward centralised baseline funding models that account for long-term lifecycle costs. Furthermore, institutions must resolve structural staffing shortages and provide continuous technical upskilling to ensure information professionals can navigate evolving digital ecosystems. Ultimately, securing long-term digital access depends entirely on investing equally in crucial technology infrastructure and human capital for current and future generations within global repositories.

References

Adekoya, C. O. (2023). Research data management services among librarians in Nigeria. Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, 17(2), 156–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/1533290X.2023.2184951

Agbaje, M. A. (2024). Technical competencies, soft skills, and data curation of library personnel in university libraries. Jewel Journal of Librarianship, 18(1), 45–56.

Feng, Y. and Richards, L. (2018). A review of digital curation professional competencies: theory and current practices. Records Management Journal, 28(1), 62-78.

Fuhr. J. (2022). Developing data services skills in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 81(2), 250–265. DOI:10.5860/crl.83.3.474

Lively, J. (2018). Towards effective cost-modeling for digital preservation. Open Science Framework.

Rosenthal, D. S. (2014). The economics of digital preservation. Digital Preservation Coalition.

Zareef, M & Jabeen, M., (2025). A systematic review of digital curation services in academic libraries: navigating policies, skills and challenges. Digital Library Perspectives. 41. 10.1108/DLP-10-2024-0158.

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