Abstract

The creation, storage, and presentation of digital artifacts is an increasingly popular area of interest for a wide range of communities. Once an almost proprietary term for museums and library science programs, the term “digital curation” has recently become a buzzword within more generalist communities. Recently, digital curation has become an umbrella concept to describe activities related to digital preservation, data curation, electronic records management, copyright management, digital asset management, data collection, reporting and presentation activities, and even content remixing activities. Yakel (2007) observed four discrete treatments of digital curation in government reports and called for increased attention to the development of the term’s meaning as diverse communities become involved in the dialogue. This article explores the different usages of the term, those usages' relationships to the attention economy for different groups (for example, journalists use the term to emphasize the attracting near-term attention to ephemeral digital artifacts while librarians emphasize the long-term storage and preservation of digital artifacts), and confusion created by the different agendas of their uses. This article explores relevant literature from multiple disciplines and analyzes contemporary media industry sources to consider the differences implied by the term’s use, including the differences in political economy, community goals, perceptions of content life cycles, the utilization of short-tail and long-tail access strategies and even expressed data values.