Curation

Curation has been defined as " the practice of keeping artefacts or manuports in custody for a period of time, of looking after them, and sometimes of reworking them." (IFRAO Rock Art Glossary, 2002)

The word curation is increasingly used in the phrase data curation and thus related to Library and Information Science (cf., Gray et al., 2002; Johansson, 2005).

Literature:

Gray, J.; Szalay, A. S.; Thakar, A. R.; Stoughton, C. & vandenBerg,J. (2002). Online Scientific Data Curation, Publication, and Archiving. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Research. http://www.lsst.org/Project/docs/MSR_TR_2002_74_Online_Scientific_Data_Curation_Publication_and_Archiving.pdf

IFRAO Rock Art Glossary (2002). http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/glossar/web/glossar.htm#C

Johansson, V. (2005). Data Curation and the Construction of Knowledge. (Ph.d. project). E-mail 26-09-2005.

Abstracts:

My PhD project has the working title “Data Curation and the Construction of Knowledge”. The purpose of the project is to clarify and explain some of the political and epistemological features involved in data curation processes and strategies.

The way we view and value knowledge is reflected in the kinds of efforts that can be related to current knowledge organisation practices and technological investments. Today, governments and research institutions are investing increasing amounts of money and efforts into many different information and communication technologies and infrastructures, but one area that has attracted particular attention concerns research data in raw or semi-processed form. ‘Data curation’ has emerged and been propagated as the answer to many stakeholders’ needs, a term which is used to describe all practices for maintaining, archiving, preserving and value-adding of digital research data.

High hopes and expectations are being placed on such data curation strategies, although the relationships between ‘facts’, ‘raw empirical data’, ‘information’, ‘(new) knowledge’ and ‘science’ often seem confused and unclear. One specifically interesting claim concerning the benefits of data curation is the assumption that if carried out in a “good” way, the adding of “value” to data will lead to “new sources” of “information and knowledge”. It is such and similar epistemologically and politically interesting assumptions and consequences relating to data curation that I want to investigate in this study.

In the end, I hope to arrive at some conclusions regarding what political and epistemological assumptions and implications for communication and research structures and processes in certain selected scientific disciplines that may result from government policies and actor responses in relation to scientific data curation. Variations in actor responses result from, and affect, not only the relationships between ‘science’ and ‘society’ in different ways, but also the scientific information provision for researchers, and, most importantly, for how knowledge is viewed, formed (constructed) and valued. I also hope to be able to say something about what consequences for the LIS profession(s) that could be expected from their and other actors’ level and form of involvement and integration in such processes."