Data Curation – Question 5

I would say that all of those factors are affecting data curation, and each is interrelated. The technology needs to be developed and available first so that infrastructure can be built on it. Libraries and archives have made a lot of progress in this area, especially in the realm of repository development.

I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed.

From my perspective, these issues of technology, infrastructure, staffing, and training are all important issues that can directly impact data curation both within local institutional settings and more generally as a field, but I would argue that a larger cultural issue surrounds and affects all of these elements.

The biggest issues facing data curation now relate to the challenges of managing change. More than specifics of technology, infrastructure, staffing, or training, there is a general problem of how to transition organizations, work roles, and resource allocations from old configurations to new ones. Curating data requires supporting information work alongside other research tasks, from the inception of research projects to the (re)use of research products in the future.