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.”

CLIR’s Digital Library Federation (DLF) Program is involved in several collaborations in data curation. The ARL/DLF E-Science Institute, launched in July 2011, gives participants a basis for developing a sound strategic approach to exploring and supporting e-science within their organizations. It comprises a set of designed learning experiences that take small teams of through a process that strengthens and advances their e-science support role. CLIR and ARL are now assessing the level of interest in a similar educational experience, focused on e-research, that would be relevant for small and large institutions alike.

The DLF Program is also 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 activity is an environmental scan of professional development needs and of education and training opportunities for digital curation in the academy. The second is an anthropological study of five sites where digital curation activities are under way. The third 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 Data Curation Fellowship Program is 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.