Diatomscapes exposé: how faculty and digital librarians collaborate to promote and preserve the passion of research (CP3R) for digital future

Abstract

The Digital Curation Centre Curation Lifecycle Model outlived the development of a systematic approach for preservation of images of biological silica collected from the southern part of the United States. This paper opted for an experimental approach of collaborative open-access institutional repository (OA IR) digital collection building and digital preservation strategy for Diatomscapes. Using a small representative sample of images of biological silica as a small corpus of digital data to develop, faculty and digital librarian began to collaborate to develop ways to describe, publish, promote, and preserve Diatomscapes for current and future use. This paper shows how publishing, promoting, and preserving faculty research infl uences faculty support of and contribution participation in OA IR development and digital preservation exploration implementation. Diatomscapes digital collections in Picasa, Flickr, and DigiTool and digital preservation via Florida Digital Archive (FDA) and MetaArchive were a few outcomes. This paper provides empirical insights on how faculty views, practise or not practise digital curation, and preservation of primary research digital content, for current and future use.