RESOURCE: Digital Collections Management Compendium

The Library of Congress has announced the launch of its Digital Collections Management Compendium (DCMC). The DCMC is a comprehensive set of guidelines and policies for LoC’s digital collection management. The DCMC is intended to promote “enduring access to the Library’s vast digital collections.” Senior Digital Collections Specialist Jesse Johnston writes, “This resource is primarily a policy resource for staff at the Library of Congress, but we are also sharing it openly and publicly as a resource for colleagues at other institutions.”

The DCMC covers:

• Digital Formats
• Inventory and Custody
• Access

The Compendium was guided by community best practices for digital preservation, including the trustworthy digital repository standard (ISO 16363) and NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation. The DCMC also defines IT roles, discussing the responsibility of collection managers and IT business needs for systems that manage collections.

The DCMC will be of particular interest to those DH librarians who work in digital collection management or seek to introduce standards and policies for digital collections in their libraries.