LibGuides: Data Management @ ODU: Data Curation

What is Data Curation?

ICPSR (the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) describes data curation as the following:

"Data curation is akin to work performed by an art or museum curator. Through the curation process, data are organized, described, cleaned, enhanced, and preserved for public use, much like the work done on paintings or rare books to make the works accessible to the public now and in the future. With the modern Web, it's increasingly easy to post and share data. Without curation, however, data can be difficult to find, use, and interpret." (ICPSR, Data Management & Curation)

The Data Curation Network (DCN) defines data curation as "the encompassing work and actions taken by curators of a data repository in order to provide meaningful and enduring access to data" (Johnston, et al., 2016). The authors identified and defined data curation activities which may include, among others:

re-organization of files
validation of computer code
link the data to related publications using metadata (provides context)
transformation of the data format to different (more usable or accessible) formats
data cleaning to detect and fix errors in the data
deidentification of personal information
enhancing metadata to improve discoverability and reuse

Resources

ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
ODU is a member of ICPSR, the world’s largest social science data archive. Membership includes unlimited institution-wide access to the archive, discounted access to methods training and teaching resources, discounted tuition for the ICPSR Summer Program, and access to an extensive community of research data producers and users.
Data Curation Network (DCN)
The Data Curation Network is a membership organization hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries that provides education, resources, and a community for data curation.