We surveyed college and university and other research libraries in the United Kingdom and United States to find out more about their approach to data curation. Ten libraries were surveyed in each country. Two non-academic libraries with profiles similar to academic libraries were also included.The study presents a broad range of data on budgets, staffing, assessment, technology use, interdepartmental cooperation, metadata development, data security, discovery tools, marketing, archiving, data preservation and other aspects of data curation management. Some of the participating institutions include: Tulane, Syracuse University, the University of New Mexico, Imperial College London, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Bath, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of London, the Center for Research Libraries and Arizona State University. Just a few of the 108 page report's many findings are that:· The majority of libraries (70%) surveyed assisted faculty with advice on how to develop data management plans for grants or personal use.· For 30% of the UK libraries surveyed, data curation was a line item in the library budget.· The mean average percentage of overall data management staff time spent on the development of metadata and other cataloguing issues was 31 per cent.· We asked about the number of grant proposals that had been reviewed or contributed to by data curation office or service in the past year. The mean average was 15.38. However, the numbers were much higher in the United States than in the UK. US libraries reported a mean average of 21.4 compared to 5.33.

This 100+ page report looks closely at the data curation and management practices of 17 colleges and universities including the University of Surrey, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Toronto, the University of Brasilia, Colorado State University and many others. The report covers how libraries deal with data management plans for grant proposals, tutorials and training in data management for scholars, library spending for data curation, relations with other players in data curation such as offices of research and academic faculties, metadata development for datasets, and other issues in data curation and data management

This survey looks closely at the data curation practices of a sample of research-oriented universities largely from the USA, the UK, Australia and Scandinavia but also including India, South Africa and other countries. The study looks at how major universities are assisting faculty in developing data curation and management plans for large scale data projects, largely in the sciences and social sciences, often as pre-conditions for major grants. The report looks at which departments of universities are shouldering the data curation burden, the personnel involved in the efforts, the costs involved, types of software used, difficulties in procuring scientific experiment logs and other hard to obtain information, types of training offered to faculty, and other issues in large scale data management

Data are becoming the proverbial coin of the digital realm: a research commodity that might purchase reputation credit in a disciplinary culture of data sharing, or buy transparency when faced with funding agency mandates or publisher scrutiny. Unlike most monetary systems, however, digital data can flow in all too great an abundance. Not only does this currency actually grow on trees, but it comes from animals, books, thoughts, and each of us! And that is what makes data curation so essential. The abundance of digital research data challenges library and information science professionals to harness this flow of information streaming from research discovery and scholarly pursuit and preserve the unique evidence for future use. Volume One of Curating Research Data explores the variety of reasons, motivations, and drivers for why data curation services are needed in the context of academic and disciplinary data repository efforts. Twelve chapters, divided into three parts, take an in-depth look at the complex practice of data curation as it emerges around us. Part I sets the stage for data curation by describing current policies, data sharing cultures, and collaborative efforts currently underway that impact potential services. Part II brings several key issues, such as cost recovery and marketing strategy, into focus for practitioners when considering how to put data curation services in action. Finally, Part III describes the full lifecycle of data by examining the ethical and practical reuse issues that data curation practitioners must consider as we strive to prepare data for the future. Digital data is ubiquitous and rapidly reshaping how scholarship progresses now and into the future. The information expertise of librarians can help ensure the resiliency of digital data, and the information it represents, by addressing how the meaning, integrity, and provenance of digital data generated by researchers today will be captured and conveyed to future researchers.

"With the appearance of big data, open data, and particularly research data curation on many libraries' radar screens, data service has become a critically important topic for academic libraries. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse community of practitioners, this collection of case studies, original research, survey chapters, and theoretical explorations presents a wide-ranging look at the field of academic data librarianship. By covering the data lifecycle from collection development to preservation, examining the challenges of working with different forms of data, and exploring service models suited to a variety of library types, this volume provides a toolbox of strategies that will allow librarians and administrators to respond creatively and effectively to the data deluge. Edited by Kristi Thompson and Lynda Kellam, Databrarianship: The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice provides advice and insight on data services for all types of academic libraries and will be of interest to library educators"--Publisher's website.