"From Plan to Action: Successful Data Management Plan Implementation in a Multidisciplinary Project"

Margaret H. Burnette, Sarah C. Williams, and Heidi J. Imker have published "From Plan to Action: Successful Data Management Plan Implementation in a Multidisciplinary Project" in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

A case study was designed to gather insights from the research group through semi-structured interviews. Questions focused on which of the recommended data management strategies were adopted and how those strategies affected the project in terms of cost, time, effectiveness, and long-term data use.

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"Campus Support Systems for Technical Researchers Navigating Big Data Ethics"

Bonnie Tijerina has published "Campus Support Systems for Technical Researchers Navigating Big Data Ethics" in EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

A team at Data & Society recently conducted interviews and campus visits with computer science researchers and librarians at eight U.S. universities to examine the role of research librarians in assisting technical researchers as they navigate emerging issues of privacy, ethics, and equitable access to data at different phases of the research process.

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"Research Data Management in Social Sciences and Humanities: A Survey at the University of Lille (France)"

Joachim Schöpfel and Hélène Prost have published "Research Data Management in Social Sciences and Humanities: A Survey at the University of Lille (France)" in LIBREAS.

Here's an excerpt:

The paper presents results from a campus-wide survey at the University of Lille (France) on research data management in social sciences and humanities. The survey received 270 responses, equivalent to 15% of the whole sample of scientists, scholars, PhD students, administrative and technical staff (research management, technical support services); all disciplines were represented. The responses show a wide variety of practice and usage. The results are discussed regarding job status and disciplines and compared to other surveys. Four groups can be distinguished, i.e. pioneers (20-25%), motivated (25-30%), unaware (30%) and reluctant (5-10%). Finally, the next steps to improve the research data management on the campus are presented.

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"The Pathways of Research Software Preservation: An Educational and Planning Resource for Service Development"

Fernando Rios has published "The Pathways of Research Software Preservation: An Educational and Planning Resource for Service Development" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Research communities, funders, publishers, and academic libraries have put much effort towards ensuring that research data are preserved. However, the same level of attention has not been given to the associated software used to process and analyze it. As a guide to those tasked with preserving research outputs, a novel visual representation of preservation approaches relevant to research software, termed the Pathways of Research Software Preservation, is presented. The Pathways are discussed in the context of service development within the Data Management Services group at Johns Hopkins University.

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"Towards Narrowing the Curation Gap—Theoretical Considerations and Lessons Learned from Decades of Practice"

Ana Sesartić, Andreas Fischlin, and Matthias Töwe ave published "Towards Narrowing the Curation Gap-Theoretical Considerations and Lessons Learned from Decades of Practice" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

Research as a digital enterprise has created new, often poorly addressed challenges for the management and curation of research to ensure continuity, transparency, and accountability. There is a common misunderstanding that curation can be considered at a later point in the research cycle or delegated or that it is too burdensome or too expensive due to a lack of efficient tools. This creates a curation gap between research practice and curation needs. We argue that this gap can be narrowed if curators provide attractive support that befits research needs and if researchers consistently manage their work according to generic concepts consistently from the beginning. A rather uniquely long-term case study demonstrates how such concepts have helped to pragmatically implement a research practice intentionally using only minimalist tools for sustained, self-contained archiving since 1989. The paper sketches the concepts underlying three core research activities. (i) handling of research data, (ii) reference management as part of scholarly publishing, and (iii) advancing theories through modelling and simulation. These concepts represent a universally transferable best research practice, while technical details are obviously prone to continuous change. We hope it stimulates researchers to manage research similarly and that curators gain a better understanding of the curation challenges research practice actually faces.

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"The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions"

S. Vincent Gray and Elizabeth Hill have self-archived "The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions."

Here's an excerpt:

From the 1970s onward, Canadians have been active in developing services and establishing structures to support the dissemination of data. In recent years the academic data profession in Canada has largely developed around access to data from the national statistics agency, Statistics Canada, and around the services which have been developed to permit access to these data. This chapter will provide a historical background for these activities and explain how current and emerging trends continue to affect the profession.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6. Over 560 works. Over 200 works added. Live links. Selected abstracts. OA. CC-BY License. Covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

"Scholarly Communication and Data"

Hailey Mooney has self-archived "Scholarly Communication and Data."

Here's an excerpt:

The purpose of this chapter is to provide foundational knowledge for the data librarian by developing an understanding of the place of data within the current paradigm of networked digital scholarly communication. This includes defining the nature of data and data publications, examining the open science movement and its effects on data sharing, and delving into the challenges inherent to the wider integration of data into the scholarly communication system and the academic library

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6. Over 560 works. Over 200 works added. Live links. Selected abstracts. OA. CC-BY License. Covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Preserving Transactional Data

The Digital Preservation Coalition, UK Data Service, and Charles Beagrie Ltd. have released Preserving Transactional Data .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report tackles the requirements for preserving transactional data and the accompanying challenges facing companies and institutions that aim to re-use these data for analysis or research, presenting the issues and strategies which emphasize preservation practices that facilitate re-use and reproducibility.

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"Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation"

Line Pouchard has published "Revisiting the Data Lifecycle with Big Data Curation" in the International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

As science becomes more data-intensive and collaborative, researchers increasingly use larger and more complex data to answer research questions. The capacity of storage infrastructure, the increased sophistication and deployment of sensors, the ubiquitous availability of computer clusters, the development of new analysis techniques, and larger collaborations allow researchers to address grand societal challenges in a way that is unprecedented. In parallel, research data repositories have been built to host research data in response to the requirements of sponsors that research data be publicly available. Libraries are re-inventing themselves to respond to a growing demand to manage, store, curate and preserve the data produced in the course of publicly funded research. As librarians and data managers are developing the tools and knowledge they need to meet these new expectations, they inevitably encounter conversations around Big Data. This paper explores definitions of Big Data that have coalesced in the last decade around four commonly mentioned characteristics: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. We highlight the issues associated with each characteristic, particularly their impact on data management and curation. We use the methodological framework of the data life cycle model, assessing two models developed in the context of Big Data projects and find them lacking. We propose a Big Data life cycle model that includes activities focused on Big Data and more closely integrates curation with the research life cycle. These activities include planning, acquiring, preparing, analyzing, preserving, and discovering, with describing the data and assuring quality being an integral part of each activity. We discuss the relationship between institutional data curation repositories and new long-term data resources associated with high performance computing centers, and reproducibility in computational science. We apply this model by mapping the four characteristics of Big Data outlined above to each of the activities in the model. This mapping produces a set of questions that practitioners should be asking in a Big Data project

The article is under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 6

Digital Scholarship has released Version 6 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 560 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. Over 200 new works have been added to the bibliography since version five.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography covers topics such as research data creation, acquisition, metadata, repositories, provenance, management, policies, support services, funding agency requirements, peer review, publication, citation, sharing, reuse, and preservation.

Most sources have been published from January 2009 through May 2016; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

Abstracts are included in this bibliography if a work is under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY and national/international variations), a Creative Commons public domain dedication (CC0), or a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and this is clearly indicated in the work.

The Research Data Curation Bibliography is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Digital Curation and Digital Stewardship Certificate Programs

The following universities offer digital curation and digital stewardship certificate programs:

This digital preservation certificate program may also be of interest:

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Report of the Summit on Digital Curation in Art Museums

Johns Hopkins University has released the Report of the Summit on Digital Curation in Art Museums.

Here's an excerpt:

In October of 2015, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Museum Studies Program convened a group of cultural heritage professionals to discuss digital curation, its integration into the art museum community, and the role the JHU Program in Digital Curation might play in this effort. Attendees included representatives from museums, libraries, archives, foundations, and the JHU Museum Studies Program.

The meeting took place over two days. The first day and a half included a series of short presentations that addressed innovative projects; infrastructure, staffing and workflows; digital curation tools; curatorial considerations; internships, residencies and research opportunities; and local and international collaborations. . . .

Breakout sessions on the last afternoon moved the discussions from conceptual to pragmatic.

See also: Storified Tweets from Summit.

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"How to Party Like it’s 1999: Emulation for Everyone"

Dianne Dietrich, Julia Kim, Morgan McKeehan, and Alison Rhonemus have published "How to Party Like it's 1999: Emulation for Everyone" in the Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Emulated access of complex media has long been discussed, but there are very few instances in which complex, interactive, born-digital emulations are available to researchers. New York Public Library has made 1980-90's era video games from 5.25? floppy disks in the Timothy Leary Papers accessible via a DosBox emulator. These games appear in various stages of development and display the work of at least four of Leary's collaborators on the games. 56 disk images from the Leary Papers are currently emulated in the reading room. New York University has made late 1990s-mid 2000's era Photoshop files from the Jeremy Blake Papers accessible to researchers. The Blake Papers include over 300 pieces of media. Cornell University Library was awarded a grant from the NEH to analyze approximately 100 born-digital artworks created for CD-ROM from the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art to develop preservation workflows, access strategies, and metadata frameworks. Rhizome has undertaken a number of emulation projects as a major part of its preservation strategy for born-digital artworks. In cooperation with the University of Freiburg in Germany, Rhizome recently restored several digital artworks for public access using a cloud-based emulation framework. This framework (bwFLA) has been designed to facilitate the reenactments of software on a large scale, for internal use or public access. This paper will guide readers through how to implement emulation. Each of the institutions weigh in on oddities and idiosyncrasies they encountered throughout the process—from accession to access.

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"Calculating All that Jazz: Accurately Predicting Digital Storage Needs Utilizing Digitization Parameters for Analog Audio and Still Image Files"

Krista White has published "Calculating All that Jazz: Accurately Predicting Digital Storage Needs Utilizing Digitization Parameters for Analog Audio and Still Image Files" in Library Resources & Technical Services.

Here's an excerpt:

Much has been written about digitization projects over the last two decades; digital storage has been highlighted as a central feature of any digitization project, especially the need to purchase additional storage mechanisms to house digitized collections. What is missing from the library science literature is a method for reliably calculating digital storage needs on the basis of parameters for digitizing analog materials such as documents, photographs, and sound recordings in older formats.

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"Fulfill Your Digital Preservation Goals with a Budget Studio"

Yongli Zhou has published "Fulfill Your Digital Preservation Goals with a Budget Studio" in Information Technology and Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

In order to fulfill digital preservation goals, many institutions use high-end scanners for in-house scanning of historical print and oversize materials. However, high-end scanners' prices do not fit in many small institutions' budget. As digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera technologies advance and camera prices drop quickly, a budget photography studio can help to achieve institutions' preservation goals. This paper compares images delivered by a high-end overhead scanner and a consumer level DSLR camera, discusses pros and cons of using each method, demonstrates how to set up a cost efficient shooting studio, and presents a budget estimate for a studio.

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"Migrating 2 and 3D Datasets: Preserving AutoCAD at the Archaeology Data Service"

Katie Green, Kieron Niven, and Georgina Field have published "Migrating 2 and 3D Datasets: Preserving AutoCAD at the Archaeology Data Service" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

The lessons learnt during the largescale CAD migration process presented in this paper provide an important insight into the digital preservation component of Research Data Management practice.

While the overall migration process presented in this paper was not a strict migration according to the OAIS model and in many cases essentially involved "re-archiving" data, the exercise itself was necessary for the long-term preservation of the data and was undertaken in such a way as to achieve the best possible outcome for both the ADS and data consumers. While elements of the process were both laborious and time consuming (and therefore costly), as a result of having to reassess original files in the SIP, this highlights the benefits of normalizing data at the point of ingest and the production of homogenous AIPs to stable, reliable standards and formats, reaffirming the importance of professional Research Data Management and preservation practices.

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"Translating Theory to Practice: Defining Digital Preservation Planning in Museums"

Emma Palakika James has self-archived "Translating Theory to Practice: Defining Digital Preservation Planning in Museums."

Here's an excerpt:

In this thesis, digital preservation in museums is examined, specifically the development, planning, and implementation of digital preservation initiatives. First, a literature review of digital preservation basics, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and digital preservation policy is presented, followed by case studies of three best-practicing museums. Four key themes are discussed, including defining digital preservation, integration of digital preservation technology, collaboration, and policy development. Finally, several conclusions and recommendations are presented, most notably that digital preservation in a museum context must be viewed and implemented from a collections management perspective.

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Web Archiving Environmental Scan

The Harvard Library has released the Web Archiving Environmental Scan.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The purpose of the environmental scan was to explore and document current web archiving programs (and institutions desiring a similar capacity) to identify common concerns, needs, and expectations in the collection and provision of web archives to users; the provision and maintenance of web archiving infrastructure and services; and the use of web archives by researchers.

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"Humanities Data in the Library: Integrity, Form, Access"

Thomas Padilla has published "Humanities Data in the Library: Integrity, Form, Access" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Digitally inflected Humanities scholarship and pedagogy is on the rise. Librarians are engaging this activity in part through a range of digital scholarship initiatives. While these engagements bear value, efforts to reshape library collections in light of demand remain nascent. This paper advances principles derived from practice to inform development of collections that can better support data driven research and pedagogy, examines existing practice in this area for strengths and weaknesses, and extends to consider possible futures.

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UNESCO/PERSIST Guidelines for the Selection of Digital Heritage for Long-Term Preservation

UNESCO has released UNESCO/PERSIST Guidelines for the Selection of Digital Heritage for Long-Term Preservation.

Here's an excerpt:

The aim of the Guidelines is to provide an overarching starting point for libraries, archives, museums and other heritage institutions when drafting their own policies on the selection of digital heritage for long-term sustainable digital preservation. Existing institutional policies may be assessed against the Guidelines and revised if required. The Guidelines address a diverse audience.

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"The RADAR Project-A Service for Research Data Archival and Publication"

Angelina Kraft et al. have published "The RADAR Project-A Service for Research Data Archival and Publication" in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Here's an excerpt:

The aim of the RADAR (Research Data Repository) project is to set up and establish an infrastructure that facilitates research data management: the infrastructure will allow researchers to store, manage, annotate, cite, curate, search and find scientific data in a digital platform available at any time that can be used by multiple (specialized) disciplines. While appropriate and innovative preservation strategies and systems are in place for the big data communities (e.g., environmental sciences, space, and climate), the stewardship for many other disciplines, often called the "long tail research domains", is uncertain. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the RADAR collaboration project develops a service oriented infrastructure for the preservation, publication and traceability of (independent) research data. The key aspect of RADAR is the implementation of a two-stage business model for data preservation and publication: clients may preserve research results for up to 15 years and assign well-graded access rights, or to publish data with a DOI assignment for an unlimited period of time. Potential clients include libraries, research institutions, publishers and open platforms that desire an adaptable digital infrastructure to archive and publish data according to their institutional requirements and workflows.

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CCAHA 2016 Preservation Needs Assessment Program

The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts is accepting applications for its 2016 Preservation Needs Assessment Program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

CCAHA is seeking applicants for its Preservation Needs Assessment Program. Through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), CCAHA is able to offer a limited number of subsidized preservation needs assessments. Awarded institutions will pay a total of just $350 for services valued at over $5,000.

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"Persistent URIs Must Be Used to Be Persistent"

Herbert Van de Sompel, Martin Klein, and Shawn M. Jones have self-archived "Persistent URIs Must Be Used to Be Persistent."

Here's an excerpt:

We quantify the extent to which references to papers in scholarly literature use persistent HTTP URIs that leverage the Digital Object Identifier infrastructure. We find a significant number of references that do not, speculate why authors would use brittle URIs when persistent ones are available, and propose an approach to alleviate the problem.

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Preserving Social Media

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released Preserving Social Media.

Here's an excerpt:

This report provides an overview of strategies for the archiving of social media for long-term access, for both policy and implementation. Specifically, it addresses social networking platforms and platforms with significant amounts of user-generated content, excluding blogs, trading, and marketing sites, which are covered in other Technology Watch Reports.

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Filling the Digital Preservation Gap: A Jisc Research Data Spring Project Phase Two Report—February 2016

Jenny Mitcham et al. have released Filling the Digital Preservation Gap: A Jisc Research Data Spring Project Phase Two Report—February 2016.

Here's an excerpt:

Phase 1 of the project investigated the need for digital preservation as part of a wider infrastructure for research data management and looked specifically at how the open source digital preservation system Archivematica could fulfil this function. . . .

Work in phase 2 had the following aims:

  • Work with Artefactual Systems to develop Archivematica in a number of areas (highlighted in our phase 1 report) in order to make the system more suitable for fitting into our infrastructures for research data management
  • Develop our own detailed implementation plans for Hull and York to establish how Archivematica will be incorporated into our local infrastructures for research data
  • Consider how Archivematica could work as an above campus installation
  • Consider how digital preservation is addressed by the projects in phase 2 of Research Data Spring

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