New MA in Digital Asset Management
King’s has launched an innovative postgraduate programme to respond to the demand for digitally literate professionals to work in libraries, archives, cultural heritage institutions and business enterprises by equipping students with a range of strategic, technical and practical skills to provide direction and leadership in this area.
We live in a digital age where understanding our history, culture, society, and the future development and innovation in the economy and business relies increasingly upon the effective management, curation, preservation, and use of a wide range of complex digital information and knowledge. Managing this digital information is presenting significant challenges for organisations and as a consequence there is an increasing demand for professionals with expertise in digital asset management.
The MA in Digital Asset Management, jointly taught by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities and the Centre for e-Research, takes a comparative approach requiring students to explore and critically assess competing theories and practices from across library, archival, information science, and e-science thus providing a well-rounded understanding of the requirements across domains.
Recent years have seen an explosion in the volume, complexity and range of digital content, often referred to as a data deluge or data tsunami, whilst government speaks of the digital economy as the engine of growth.
Sheila Anderson, Director, Centre for e-Research at King’s and co-director of the programme, comments:
‘This MA meets the needs of a wide variety of organisations, including libraries, archives, museums, higher education, government, industry, healthcare, publishing and law firms, for leaders who can plan and implement the management, exploitation and preservation of an ever increasing quantity of digital content. We hope that the students graduating with this MA will make a start in providing those much needed solutions.’
Simon Tanner, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, and co-director of the MA adds:
‘The programme is a great opportunity for those already working in libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions, who wish to move to a leadership role in the management of digital content. It will benefit those wishing to apply best practice in the management and curation of research data, and for graduates of archival, library and information science who wish to specialise in digital records and digital asset management. Computer science graduates may also wish to move into this growth area.’
Claire Hudson, Head of Collections Management, Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Theatre & Performance says:
‘Those working in the heritage sector need to exploit the contribution that digital content can make to their collections but also understand the inevitable complexities relating to its preservation and use. Building capacity in the management of digital assets is essential.’
There are still places available for 2010 entry. For further information about course content, fees and the application process, visit www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch/teaching and the online prospectus www.kcl.ac.uk/prospectus/graduate/index/name/digital_asset_m...
Notes to editors
Centre for e-Research
The Centre for e-Research (CeRch) is an academic research centre, located in Information Services and Systems (ISS) at King’s College London, aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary, cross-school and department, national and international collaboration. The Centre’s strengths are in:
• sustainable e-infrastructures for research;
• digital libraries and digital archives including data use, creation, curation and preservation;
• researcher practices in the digital domain; and
• ICT-Methods with particular expertise in e-Science, geo-spatial and geo-temporal methods, text mining, textual analysis, and use of grids.
The Centre is unusual in that it is both an academic centre researching, publishing and teaching in its areas of expertise - including contributing to an RAE Unit of Assessment with the Centre of Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King's and running (with CCH) a masters teaching programme in Digital Asset Management - and a focus for ISS-related activities supporting e-research, data management, and the curation and preservation of research data.
The Centre works collaboratively with researchers, research teams and groups, and as partners in research projects across King’s College London. It also works in partnership nationally with HE and research institutes, with European institutions, and internationally with HE library and research institutes.
www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) is an academic department in the School of Arts and Humanities at King's College London with emphasis on research. The primary objective of the CCH is to study the possibilities of computing for arts and humanities scholarship and, in collaboration with local, national and international research partners across the disciplines, to design and build applications which implement these possibilities, in particular those which produce online research publications. CCH offers undergraduate modules and programmes at the MA and PhD levels, hosts seminars, conferences and colloquia, has an active programme for visiting fellows and welcomes collaboration of all kinds in the digital humanities.
www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/cch
