  Jump deformations and contractions of Lie algebras are inverse concepts, but
the approaches to their computations are quite different. In this paper, we
contrast the two approaches, showing how to compute jump deformations from the
miniversal deformation of a Lie algebra, and thus arrive at the contractions.
We also compute contractions directly. We use the moduli spaces of real
3-dimensional and complex 3 and 4-dimensional Lie algebras as models for
explaining a deformation theory approach to computation of contractions.
