59 SPEC Kit 354: Data Curation
information). Also, some questions feel library-centric and while some of these services are being
provided, I’m not sure if the providers would use the same language to describe their work.
Our practices and support/resources are evolving rapidly. None of this might represent our services
two years from now. The repository will still be here, but might look very different.
Our responses represent our efforts to launch a new and greatly enhanced set of services in this area.
We recently brought on four new staff members to support data curation, so our numbers for staff may
seem distorted with respect to the amount of data we currently have in our IR. Many of our responses
reflect our plans to begin rolling out and advertising new services in the current calendar year.
Our situation is affected by the recent addition of a self-deposit institutional repository into the mix.
Currently, we have two workflows for curating research data, 1) completely mediated by staff in
Repository &Data Curation for large sets of audio or visual data and 2) the self-deposit institutional
repository for research data supporting publication.
See websites for the Research Data unit of our Libraries, http://www.lib.purdue.edu/researchdata, as
well as PURR, http://purr.purdue.edu (in particular, its policies and knowledge base). Also, we have
tried to publish and present our experience in designing and implementing data services at Purdue in
the literature and conferences.
The University Library formally rolled out Research Data Services in 2016 to the campus and have had
a data curation librarian for a little over a year. There are not many positions out there that explicitly
address data curation (in libraries). We anticipate growth in the role and instantiation of other services
in the library that will compliment it and integrate it into our other systems. So, we anticipate the need
to grow expertise in digital preservation and curation generally as a critical need.
There are a few complicating factors to our responses to this survey: 1) Our services for end-users in
this area are just emerging and quite minimal in many ways. Changes to our technical infrastructure
will impact the shape and extent of our services going forward. 2) Curation services are dispersed
among several different units within the libraries and alongside affiliated services in other units (for
example, university IT, the Center for Urban Science and Progress, etc.), so getting a complete picture
is challenging (maybe that in itself is data!) 3) We are developing similar processes for end-user created
and division of libraries curated data, and in some cases, resources may start in the former category
but move to the latter category over time, and in that process receive enhanced curation attention.
Answering this survey becomes quite difficult in these cases. 4) Getting firm numbers of submissions
into our various repositories, and deciding which meet the definition of being “data sets” (numeric?
geospatial? curated moving image files? born-digital special collections?) was very difficult.
We are in the early stages of developing data curation services.
We are in the process of moving our datasets from Islandora (e-Scholarship repository) to the campus
instance of Dataverse. From 2016, datasets appear in both in future, datasets will be held in Dataverse
alone, but with a record (linking out to the content in Dataverse) in Islandora.
We are just starting to look at data curation and have just opened up our institutional repository. We are
in the beginning phases of exploring what is needed by the faculty and the role the library should play
in that process beyond simply providing a data store that faculty can use.
We are selective about the data projects we accept for deposit. Some data curation activities might not
result in data deposit.
While we may not have all the cyberinfrastructure in place to fully offer an institutional repository
with all the features, the library staff is still working with researchers to help instill the idea of best
practices, documentation, preservation (at a lab group or center) to help insure their data will be ready.
Outside providers through granting agencies, domain centers, and such are still where we are actively
information). Also, some questions feel library-centric and while some of these services are being
provided, I’m not sure if the providers would use the same language to describe their work.
Our practices and support/resources are evolving rapidly. None of this might represent our services
two years from now. The repository will still be here, but might look very different.
Our responses represent our efforts to launch a new and greatly enhanced set of services in this area.
We recently brought on four new staff members to support data curation, so our numbers for staff may
seem distorted with respect to the amount of data we currently have in our IR. Many of our responses
reflect our plans to begin rolling out and advertising new services in the current calendar year.
Our situation is affected by the recent addition of a self-deposit institutional repository into the mix.
Currently, we have two workflows for curating research data, 1) completely mediated by staff in
Repository &Data Curation for large sets of audio or visual data and 2) the self-deposit institutional
repository for research data supporting publication.
See websites for the Research Data unit of our Libraries, http://www.lib.purdue.edu/researchdata, as
well as PURR, http://purr.purdue.edu (in particular, its policies and knowledge base). Also, we have
tried to publish and present our experience in designing and implementing data services at Purdue in
the literature and conferences.
The University Library formally rolled out Research Data Services in 2016 to the campus and have had
a data curation librarian for a little over a year. There are not many positions out there that explicitly
address data curation (in libraries). We anticipate growth in the role and instantiation of other services
in the library that will compliment it and integrate it into our other systems. So, we anticipate the need
to grow expertise in digital preservation and curation generally as a critical need.
There are a few complicating factors to our responses to this survey: 1) Our services for end-users in
this area are just emerging and quite minimal in many ways. Changes to our technical infrastructure
will impact the shape and extent of our services going forward. 2) Curation services are dispersed
among several different units within the libraries and alongside affiliated services in other units (for
example, university IT, the Center for Urban Science and Progress, etc.), so getting a complete picture
is challenging (maybe that in itself is data!) 3) We are developing similar processes for end-user created
and division of libraries curated data, and in some cases, resources may start in the former category
but move to the latter category over time, and in that process receive enhanced curation attention.
Answering this survey becomes quite difficult in these cases. 4) Getting firm numbers of submissions
into our various repositories, and deciding which meet the definition of being “data sets” (numeric?
geospatial? curated moving image files? born-digital special collections?) was very difficult.
We are in the early stages of developing data curation services.
We are in the process of moving our datasets from Islandora (e-Scholarship repository) to the campus
instance of Dataverse. From 2016, datasets appear in both in future, datasets will be held in Dataverse
alone, but with a record (linking out to the content in Dataverse) in Islandora.
We are just starting to look at data curation and have just opened up our institutional repository. We are
in the beginning phases of exploring what is needed by the faculty and the role the library should play
in that process beyond simply providing a data store that faculty can use.
We are selective about the data projects we accept for deposit. Some data curation activities might not
result in data deposit.
While we may not have all the cyberinfrastructure in place to fully offer an institutional repository
with all the features, the library staff is still working with researchers to help instill the idea of best
practices, documentation, preservation (at a lab group or center) to help insure their data will be ready.
Outside providers through granting agencies, domain centers, and such are still where we are actively
