Digital Curation Graduate Certificate

Graduate Certificate

Digital Curation

 

Gain the technical knowledge and skills needed to create, curate, preserve, and manage digital collections in a fast-changing environment.

About the Program

The rapid growth of digital collections and online services has led to a shortage of information professionals who possess the technical knowledge and learning skills needed to create, curate, preserve and manage digital collections in a fast-changing environment.

The Digital Curation graduate certificate program helps fill this gap by combining intensive, hands-on technology learning with a thorough grounding in the theoretical principles needed to curate and preserve large, complex digital collections. The program can be taken online, making it available to those currently employed or seeking new career opportunities in the information professions.

The curriculum takes a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to curating and preserving digital information and is designed to support a wide range of career paths, especially involving libraries, museums, archives, records management and data curation.

Graduate certificates are being recognized as a means for professionals with advanced degrees to update their knowledge and skills. The Digital Curation certificate also offers a path for those with undergraduate degrees who are interested in digital collections, but who may not yet be ready to commit to a full degree program.

Required Courses

All coursework for the Digital Curation certificate is conducted online, with no residency requirement. The certificate consists of 4 semester-long graduate-level courses to be taken within 4 years. You can begin the program in the fall or spring semesters each year. A total of 12 units is required for completion of the program.

Courses do not have to be taken in numerical order, although the Capstone is normally taken last.

Elective Requirement

Choose two - 6 units

Technology Requirements

This program requires access to a computer and Internet connectivity with specifications beyond the minimum requirements for most School of Information courses. Make sure you can meet the technical requirements to make sure you have the necessary hardware, software, and network connectivity.

There are no formal prerequisites for the certificate program, but you should already be reasonably proficient at finding resources on the Web and performing routine tasks using word processors and spreadsheets. You should feel comfortable with your current operating system (e.g. Windows or Mac OS) and know how to create and organize files and folders, install and configure peripherals such as printers and other hardware devices and do basic troubleshooting when problems occur.

Some courses in this program will require:

  • A Windows (Win7/Win8/Win10) or Intel-based Mac (OS-X ) computer that you have administrator rights on to install virtualization software.
  • Reliable broadband Internet connectivity (typically cable or DSL connections; download speeds of one megabit or more are preferred).
  • At least 20GB of free hard drive space or access to second internal or USB external hard drive)
  • A minimum of 2GB RAM for Mac or 3GB RAM for Windows 7/8/10 systems. Depending on individual configurations, you may need to install more than these minimums. 

At least 2 weeks prior to the start of the program, you should contact the instructor and provide a list of the equipment you propose to use. If you have questions about any particular item, especially ones you might need to purchase, your instructor will be happy to review your selections and suggest options.

Course Sharing

Up to 9 units can be shared between the Digital Curation certificate and Master's degree. Up to 6 units can be shared between the Digital Curation certificate and Archives certificates. Units cannot be triple-dipped, that is, shared among all 3 programs.