Digital Curation Preparation: A Survey of Contributors to International Professional, Educational, and Research Venues UNC SILS Technical Report 2013-01 April 15, 2013 Alex H. Poole, Christopher A. Lee, Heather L. Barnes, and Angela P. Murillo Abstract: This paper characterizes the types of research environments in which individuals engaged in digital curation research are embedded or have recently been educated. It reports data from an international survey of individuals who have presented their work in professional venues (conferences and journals) that address digital curation. We address a fundamental research question: What are the contexts in which digital curation research is being conducted? More specifically: (a) In what disciplinary and institutional contexts are stakeholders conducting digital curation education and research? (b) How do digital curation researchers characterize the field and their own work? (c) How do digital curation researchers describe their current and projected research environments? (d) What are the primary venues of engagement with the digital curation research network? Findings indicated that few respondents were students at the time of their contribution. Most respondents occupied senior-level roles or were faculty members, but few job titles included the term “curation.” Respondents had a range of skill sets and had come to digital curation activities from varied career paths and undergraduate and graduate degrees. More than four-fifths of respondents had earned master’s degrees and 13.5% had earned two master’s degrees. While nearly 40 percent of respondents with Master’s degrees had earned them in Library Science and/or Information Science, only a quarter had earned them in Computer Science, Engineering, or Applied Mathematics and nearly 29% had earned them in Arts or Humanities. Nearly 43% of respondents had earned doctoral degrees in a range of fields, most commonly in Library and Information Science-related disciplines (nearly 29%) or in Computer Science, Engineering, or Applied Mathematics (nearly 30%). Respondents connected with the digital curation research network through a wide range of conferences, journals, and associations that relate predominantly to the information professions (libraries, archives, and information science). Few respondents, however, described their research discipline as “digital curation.” Finally, nearly three-quarters of respondents reported that they were currently engaged in research and more than half of respondents reported that they were currently mentoring students. Future research could explore what institutions are embarking upon doctoral-level digital curation education initiatives and their strategies for doing so, what might be appropriate models for funding and resources for doctoral student education in digital curation, what current training and apprenticeship roles and responsibilities in digital curation doctoral education are currently available, and what other venues might be established to further nurture a digital curation doctoral community. 1. Introduction