[Asis-l] FW: New CLIR Report

[Ranti Junus]

(forwarded by request) 

 

ranti.

 

 

From: Asis-l [mailto:mailman-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Alice Bishop



A new report from the Council on Library and Information Resources
<https://www.clir.org/>  (CLIR) examines how new U.S. government
requirements for exposing and managing federally funded research data add
urgency to the call for curating data that can be used, reused, and
exploited by future generations. The Open Data Imperative: How the Cultural
Heritage Community Can Address the Federal Mandate
<https://www.clir.org/about/news/pressrelease/open-data-imperative> , offers
a series of recommendations to improve the open data infrastructure, engage
a broad community of stakeholders to support the management of data as an
asset, and expand collaboration that is vital to ensuring public access to
data.

In 2013, the U.S. government issued a mandate requiring federal agencies
with annual research and development expenditures of more than $100 million
to create plans for increasing access to federally funded scientific
research, both as published articles and as data. These plans have
significant implications for cultural heritage institutions in addressing
the current deficit in the capacity to support the re-use of data over time
and across generations of technology (digital curation) and in enabling
collaboration based on shared infrastructure.

In Part I of the report, Suzie Allard presents an analysis of 21 federal
agency public access plans that were openly available as of late 2015.
Allard, associate dean for research in the College of Communication and
Information and professor in the School of Information Sciences at The
University of Tennessee, provides 12 high-level findings grouped around open
data infrastructure, roles and responsibilities, and making data public.
These findings, she writes, "suggest that the mandate has created
opportunities for cultural heritage institutions to both build upon and
contribute to the infrastructure being developed by the federal agencies."

Providing public access to data requires effective digital curation
strategies. In Part II, Christopher Lee reports on interviews with project
staff from seven recent IMLS-funded projects that included significant
digital curation objectives to identify lessons about skills, capabilities,
and institutional arrangements that can facilitate digital curation
activities. Lee is professor at the School of Information and Library
Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

A skilled workforce is essential if the promise of public access to data is
to be fulfilled. In Part III, Nancy Y. McGovern, who is responsible for
preservation at MIT Libraries, surveys curriculum development and training
programs relating to digital curation, examines digital curation
competencies, and analyzes job descriptions for digital curation to identify
the skills and roles they entail.

"The cumulative results, findings, and recommendations of this report
provide a holistic view of data stewardship and the infrastructure required
to support data-driven research and innovation," writes CLIR Senior Program
Officer Alice Bishop, who co-authored the report.

The report is available as a PDF download free of charge at
https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub171/pub171abst.
<https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub171/pub171abst>