Curating Research Data

Data are becoming the proverbial coin of the digital realm: a research commodity that might purchase reputation credit in a disciplinary culture of data sharing, or buy transparency when faced with funding agency mandates or publisher scrutiny. Unlike most monetary systems, however, digital data can flow in all too great an abundance. Not only does this currency actually grow on trees, but it comes from animals, books, thoughts, and each of us! And that is what makes data curation so essential. The abundance of digital research data challenges library and information science professionals to harness this flow of information streaming from research discovery and scholarly pursuit and preserve the unique evidence for future use. Volume One of Curating Research Data explores the variety of reasons, motivations, and drivers for why data curation services are needed in the context of academic and disciplinary data repository efforts. Twelve chapters, divided into three parts, take an in-depth look at the complex practice of data curation as it emerges around us. Part I sets the stage for data curation by describing current policies, data sharing cultures, and collaborative efforts currently underway that impact potential services. Part II brings several key issues, such as cost recovery and marketing strategy, into focus for practitioners when considering how to put data curation services in action. Finally, Part III describes the full lifecycle of data by examining the ethical and practical reuse issues that data curation practitioners must consider as we strive to prepare data for the future. Digital data is ubiquitous and rapidly reshaping how scholarship progresses now and into the future. The information expertise of librarians can help ensure the resiliency of digital data, and the information it represents, by addressing how the meaning, integrity, and provenance of digital data generated by researchers today will be captured and conveyed to future researchers.

Research funders in the UK, USA and across Europe are implementing data management and sharing policies to maximize openness of data, transparency and accountability of the research they support. Written by experts from the UK Data Archive with over 20 years experience, this book gives post-graduate students, researchers and research support staff the data management skills required in today’s changing research environment. The book features guidance on: how to plan your research using a data management checklist how to format and organize data how to store and transfer data research ethics and privacy in data sharing and intellectual property rights data strategies for collaborative research how to publish and cite data how to make use of other people’s research data, illustrated with six real-life case studies of data use.

In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different sectors of the economy. The book is structured in four parts: Part I “The Big Data Opportunity” explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission’s BIG project. Part II “The Big Data Value Chain” details the complete big data lifecycle from a technical point of view, ranging from data acquisition, analysis, curation and storage, to data usage and exploitation. Next, Part III “Usage and Exploitation of Big Data” illustrates the value creation possibilities of big data applications in various sectors, including industry, healthcare, finance, energy, media and public services. Finally, Part IV “A Roadmap for Big Data Research” identifies and prioritizes the cross-sectorial requirements for big data research, and outlines the most urgent and challenging technological, economic, political and societal issues for big data in Europe. This compendium summarizes more than two years of work performed by a leading group of major European research centers and industries in the context of the BIG project. It brings together research findings, forecasts and estimates related to this challenging technological context that is becoming the major axis of the new digitally transformed business environment.

The massive increase in digital information in the last decade has created new requirements for institutional and technological structures and workforce skills. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation focuses on education and training needs to meet the demands for access to and meaningful use of digital information, now and in the future. This study identifies the various practices and spectrum of skill sets that comprise digital curation, looking in particular at human versus automated tasks. Additionally, the report examines the possible career path demands and options for professionals working in digital curation activities, and analyzes the economic benefits and societal importance of digital curation for competitiveness, innovation, and scientific advancement. Preparing the Workforce for Digital Curation considers the evolving roles and models of digital curation functions in research organizations, and their effects on employment opportunities and requirements. The recommendations of this report will help to advance digital curation and meet the demand for a trained workforce.

This book combines work from curators, digital artists, human computer interaction researchers and computer scientists to examine the mutual benefits and challenges posed when working together to support digital art works in their many forms. In Curating the Digital we explore how we can work together to make space for art and interaction. We look at the various challenges such as the dynamic nature of our media, the problems posed in preserving digital art works and the thorny problems of how we assess and measure audience’s reactions to interactive digital work. Curating the Digital is an outcome of a multi-disciplinary workshop that took place at SICHI2014 in Toronto. The participants from the workshop reflected on the theme of Curating the Digital via a series of presentations and rapid prototyping exercises to develop a catalogue for the future digital art gallery. The results produce a variety of insights both around the theory and philosophy of curating digital works, and also around the practical and technical possibilities and challenges. We present these complimentary chapters so that other researchers and practitioners in related fields will find motivation and imagination for their own work.

Archives and special collections departments have a long history of preserving and providing long-term access to organizational records, rare books, and other unique primary sources including manuscripts, photographs, recordings, and artifacts in various formats. The careful curatorial attention to such records has also ensured that such records remain available to researchers and the public as sources of knowledge, memory, and identity. Digital curation presents an important framework for the continued preservation of digitized and born-digital collections, given the ephemeral and device-dependent nature of digital content. With the emergence of analog and digital media formats in close succession (compared to earlier paper- and film-based formats) came new standards, technologies, methods, documentation, and workflows to ensure safe storage and access to content and associated metadata. Researchers in the digital humanities have extensively applied computing to research; for them, continued access to primary data and cultural heritage means both the continuation of humanities scholarship and new methodologies not possible without digital technology. Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities, therefore, comprises a joint framework for preserving, promoting, and accessing digital collections. This book explores at great length the conceptualization of digital curation projects with interdisciplinary approaches that combine the digital humanities and history, information architecture, social networking, and other themes for such a framework. The individual chapters focus on the specifics of each area, but the relationships holding the knowledge architecture and the digital curation lifecycle model together remain an overarching theme throughout the book; thus, each chapter connects to others on a conceptual, theoretical, or practical level. theoretical and practical perspectives on digital curation in the digital humanities and history in-depth study of the role of social media and a social curation ecosystem the role of hypertextuality and information architecture in digital curation study of collaboration and organizational dimensions in digital curation reviews of important web tools in digital humanities

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals – all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.