Session Title: 
E-science: Exploring the Librarian's Role 

Location: 
Georgetown East, Concourse Level 

Session Time: 
Sunday, May 23, 2010, 2:45 pm - 4:15 pm 

Control Number: 
08-IS-522-MLA 

Activity: 
Invited Speaker 

Publishing Title: 
Data Curation and Research Librarianship in the Age of E-science 

Author Block: 
Carole L. Palmer, Professor and Director, Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship, Graduate School 
of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 

Abstract Body: 
Description: Research libraries are evolving in the age of e-science. They are part of the growing, globally distributed 
network of digital information and services that supports the conduct of research. In this information landscape, digital 
data are now recognized as valuable asset--research resources that can be aggregated and integrated across multiple scales 
of size, time, and orders of complexity, and across discipline--to address the grand research challenges facing society. 
Data curation is a new responsibility for our field, but it is not ours alone. Our contributions need to be developed in 
concert with related activities in the scientific disciplines and in collaboration with scientists and technologists whose 
knowledge and expertise are essential in creating large-scale, high-performance information systems, where data are 
shared and linked to the literature. A new initiative in our program of e-science research and education is the Data 
Conservancy (DC), one of the first two National Science Foundation DataNet awards. Led by Sayeed Choudhury at Johns 
Hopkins University Library, DC is an international group of uniquely qualified domain scientists, information and 
computer scientists, librarians, and engineers. We are designing and implementing an integrated data curation strategy and 
infrastructure to address the urgent need to collect, organize, validate, and preserve data to support scientific inquiry. As a 
model for the future research library, the DC has a broad purview, covering astronomy, biology, earth science, and social 
science, and is working toward cross-disciplinary solutions. Research aims include a data model for observational data 
and a general framework for data collection identity and description. Technical development will be informed by a 
systematic comparative analysis of data practices and curation requirements across the research communities served by 
DC. Metadata and ontologies will be central to the organization and functionality of the repository. For example, the Open 
Archives Initiative, Object Reuse and Exchange protocol will be applied for linking data to associated literature and 
tracking provenance, and existing taxonomies and ontologies in the life sciences will be integrated to organize species 
information to support queries related to climate change. To strengthen the data curation workforce, DC educational 
initiatives will build on the biological information specialist master's degree in bioinformatics and the data curation 
specialization in the master's of science in library and information science, begun at Illinois in 2006. The "Summer 
Institute in Data Curation" will be extended to more in-service professionals, internship and mentorship options for 
students will be expanded, and educational materials will be coordinated and shared among the full set of DataNet 
partners.