Digital Collections Stewardship Course Series

A series of free online courses developed for staff at tribal archives, libraries, museums (TALMs), and small public libraries on digital stewardship and community-centered curation of digital collections.

Welcome to the Digital Collections Stewardship Course Series


Creating and sharing digital collections can be an important way to share and gather unique local history, culture, and stories. Digital collections offer an opportunity to represent a diversity of experiences and voices in your community. Planning, creating, managing, and preserving digital collections, however, can be resource-intensive work that requires technology, new skills, and an ongoing commitment to maintain them. Understanding the full lifecycle of digital stewardship is critical to successful digital collections. This course series, designed specifically with the needs of small cultural institutions in mind, will guide you through the lifecycle of digital stewardship. This lifecycle describes the entire ongoing range of tasks and activities necessary to successfully share digital collections. If you are new to digital collections, we encourage you to take these courses sequentially; if not, feel free to choose the courses that fit your needs.

Creating and sharing digital collections can be an important way to share and gather unique local history, culture, and stories. Digital collections offer an opportunity to represent a diversity of experiences and voices in your community. Planning, creating, managing, and preserving digital collections, however, can be resource-intensive work that requires technology, new skills, and an ongoing commitment to maintain them. Understanding the full lifecycle of digital stewardship is critical to successful digital collections.

This course series, designed specifically with the needs of small cultural institutions in mind, will guide you through the lifecycle of digital stewardship. This lifecycle describes the entire ongoing range of tasks and activities necessary to successfully share digital collections. If you are new to digital collections, we encourage you to take these courses sequentially; if not, feel free to choose the courses that fit your needs.

Digital Stewardship Lifecycle_December updates.png

Options for Taking the Course Series

This course series is available to take here on the SHN, and also available on the OCLC WebJunction website, where learners can create a login to complete the courses, track their progress, and use the discussion forum in conversation with other learners. The actual course content on WebJunction is nearly identical on the SHN. Learners using the SHN courses can access the courses instantly without a login, by clicking on a course below. View our list of tips for success with this training as you get started.

Digital Collections Stewardship Courses



Coming soon! Course 4: Digitizing Course 5: Enhancing Course 6: Saving Course 7: Sharing

Digital Collections Stewardship Courses

Digital Collections Stewardship 1: Introduction

Digital Collections Stewardship 2: Preparing

Digital Collections Stewardship 3: Gathering

Coming soon!

Course 4: Digitizing

Course 5: Enhancing

Course 6: Saving

Course 7: Sharing

Washington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation, in partnership with OCLC’s WebJunction, created this series of free online courses developed for staff at tribal archives, libraries, museums (TALMs), and small public libraries on digital stewardship and community-centered curation of digital collections. These on-demand courses were adapted from the Tribal Digital Stewardship Cohort Program conducted by the CDSC between 2015-2020 for 25 participating Indigenous nations, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities.

To learn more about the courses, read the press release from 2020 and see the event page for WebJunction's April 26, 2022 webinar about the courses with an extensive list of resources.

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