Final report published for long-running IMLS Data Curation Education Program Grant

Carole Palmer
Carole Palmer, Professor Emeritus
Linda C. Smith
Linda C. Smith, Professor Emerita
Allen Renear
Allen Renear, Professor

The final grant report is now available for "Centuries of Knowledge: Graduate School of Library and Information Science Data Curation Education Program (DCEP)." DCEP was one of the longest-running grant projects at GSLIS, active between October 2006 and December 2011. The full report is available in IDEALS.

DCEP was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and was designed to increase educational and research capacity in data curation at GSLIS. The Data Curation Education Program, a specialization within the GSLIS Master of Science degree program, was developed in the first year of the project. As of May 2012, fifty-four students have completed the specialization, and alumni have gone on to secure positions in a variety of institutions, including research centers, academic libraries, government agencies, and corporate industry.

In developing the curriculum for the specialization, two new courses were created: Foundations of Data Curation, a survey course on the emerging field, and Digital Preservation. Along with Systems Analysis and Management, they constitute the core required courses in the specialization, and they are consistently enrolled at capacity each semester.

The first annual Summer Institute on Data Curation was offered in 2008 for practicing information professionals, facilitating the development of a community of practice across U.S. and Canadian academic and research organizations. Outreach and service activities have led to a range of new partnerships that have resulted in student fieldwork opportunities and new collaborative research and education activities at CIRSS, resulting in four successful grant proposals.

GSLIS faculty involved in the project include principal investigator (PI) Allen Renear, professor and interim dean; and co-PIs Carole Palmer, professor and director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship, and Linda C. Smith, professor and associate dean. Previous GSLIS faculty who served as PIs on the project include P. Bryan Heidorn (October 1, 2006 – November 30, 2009) and Melissa Cragin (PhD ’09) (December 1, 2009 – August 15, 2011) as well as former GSLIS Dean John Unsworth who served as co-PI.

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