GitHub as a collaborative curation platform for memory projects of COVID-19 in China

This study looks at online collaborative memory projects on GitHub, all of which started amid China's war on the then unknown corona virus in early 2020 and curated stories from Chinese language social media, news outlets, and official websites. It finds that GitHub enables a collaborative yet centralized archiving and curation workflow, and each of the three projects present unique ways the COVID-19 memories can be preserved. Three key events – the lockdown of Wuhan, the death of the whistleblowing doctor, and the controversy over Fang Fang's diaries – are further analyzed to show how these memory projects could form narratives that post challenge to the officially sanctioned version of the ‘correct' collective memory.

Contemporary Collecting in a Pandemic: Challenges and Solutions for Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic in Memory Organizations

This paper draws on a survey of contemporary collecting projects aiming to document the COVID-19 pandemic in museums and other memory organizations. The survey focused on European memory organizations and investigated the practices they adopted in collecting, accessioning, recording, preserving, and displaying material and immaterial witnesses of the pandemic. This paper presents the results of the survey, with a particular attention on the challenges faced by these projects in relation to born-digital objects. It discusses how organizations were able to quickly launch initiatives aimed at collecting memories of the pandemic, drawing on different collection methods, adapting to the circumstances, and using a proactive attitude to reach out to different communities. The paper highlights the solutions adopted to ensure legal compliance in these projects and discusses the need for ethical considerations in relation to the collection of traumatic memories. It suggests that these collecting projects are likely to face significant challenges in the subsequent processing of this material-due to its volume and the need for new digital curation and preservation workflows. Therefore, the paper argues that these projects could also lead to a renewed attention and collaboration across the heritage sector on issues of digital curation and preservation.

Digital Curation of Local Historical Research Data: Use “Two Ancient Forts of Keelung and Tamsui” as an Example

Taiwan has been developing local historical studies for more than 30 years, and there have been problems such as the research data cannot be effectively preserved, added value, reused, transformed, and promoted. Based on the concept of digital curation, this paper proposes a digital curation model of local historical research data, and uses the two ancient forts of Keelung and Tamsui left over from the Spanish-Dutch period in northern Taiwan in the 17th century as examples. We start with the relevant historical material, collecting, screening, and compiling literature data, carry out field surveys and digitize the collected materials for processing and preservation. Furthermore, consider the subsequent access, presentation and reuse of digital content in order to transform it into popular science content suitable for public viewing. Finally, through the development and presentation of 3D models, the actual experience of VR virtual curation, plus the production and broadcasting of videos, the integration of virtual and real is carried out. In addition, this research also promotes online curation in response to the Covid-19 epidemic. The benefits can be learned from the analysis of online viewing data that digital curation does have the effect of not being restricted by time and space. © 2021. Journal of Educational Media and Library Sciences. All Rights Reserved.