Curatcurate

Curatcurate is a term used to describe a collaborative approach to digital curation that emphasizes community input, transparency, and explicit provenance. It can refer to both a philosophy of inclusive selection and, in some contexts, to platforms or workflows designed to support such collaboration. The term does not denote a single standard or product but rather a family of practices.

In curatcurate practice, multiple contributors may propose items, attach contextual notes, and map relationships between items. Collections are constructed as interconnected narratives rather than static lists, with items linked by topics, events, or thematic connections. Changes are tracked over time, and editors or peer reviewers can adjudicate additions. Inclusion criteria are made explicit, and governance mechanisms help balance diverse perspectives and maintain quality.

Technologies associated with curatcurate often include collaborative editing interfaces, tagging and facet-based search, version control, and graph-based representations of item relationships. The approach seeks to enhance discoverability and reproducibility, showing how selections were made and how items relate to one another, thereby supporting scholarly, educational, and cultural contexts.

Applications span museums, libraries, archives, digital humanities projects, and community archives. Supporters argue that curatcurate can democratize curation by distributing authority and surfacing overlooked materials, while critics note the need for sustained participation and robust moderation to prevent bias or quality issues. The concept remains flexible and is implemented in diverse ways across institutions and online communities.