Data Curation

What is Data Curation?

The University of Illinois’ Graduate School of Library and Information Science defines data curation as “the active and ongoing management of data thorugh its life cycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship, science, and education. Data curation activities enable data discovery and retrieval, maintain its quality, add value, and provide for reuse over time, and this new field includes authentication, archiving, management, preservation, retrieval, and representation.”

Sayeed Choudhury, associate dean for research data management at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and leader of the Data Conservancy, discusses the "stack model" for data management employed by JHU and discusses the model's components—storage, archiving, preservation, and curation—in the following video.

Data Curation Activities

CLIR is involved in several collaborations in data curation. It is managing a research project on how to build capacity for data curation in varying disciplines. The project, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, consists of three interrelated activities that will be completed by summer 2013. The first, an environmental scan of professional development needs and of education and training opportunities for digital curation in the academy, and the second, an anthropological study of five sites where digital curation activities are under way, were published in August 2012. The third activity is a report that analyzes the results of the two research efforts and includes a proposal, informed by the findings, for amending the curriculum for CLIR’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Libraries program.

The CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellowships in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences and Fellowships in Data Curation for Medieval Studies are an expansion of CLIR’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Academic Libraries. CLIR/DLF Data Curation Fellowships will provide recent Ph.D.s with professional development, education, and training opportunities in data curation for the sciences and social sciences. Through these fellowships, CLIR seeks to raise awareness and build capacity for sound data management practice throughout the academy.

The DLF is also a partner in the DuraSpace/ARL/DLF E-Science Institute. ARL and DLF launched the institute in July 2011 to give participants a basis for developing a sound strategic approach to exploring and supporting e-science within their organizations. The Institute is being offered for the 2012-13 academic year as the ARL/DLF/DuraSpace E-Science Institute.