Data Curation Definitions

Definitions and articles about data curation...
Other definitions give insight into how people perceive data curation.

"Data publication is really data curation. The curators must capture as much metadata as possible. Project design documents, discussions, procedures, software, and operations logs are part of the metadata and should be part of the data publication. The science community can benefit from digital library research in this area." (J. Gray, A. S. Szalay, A. R. Thakar, C. Stoughton, and J. Vandenberg, \Online scientific data curation, publication and archiving," in Virtual Observatories, A. S. Szalay, ed., Proc. SPIE 4846, pp. 103{107, 2002.)

"Generating the data is one thing, preserving it in a form so that it can be used by scientists other than the creators is entirely another issue. This is the process of 'curation'." (Hey, A. J. G. and Trefethen, A. E. (2003) 'The Data Deluge: An e-Science Perspective,' in Berman, F., Fox, G. C. and Hey, A. J. G., Eds. Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality, chapter 36, pp. 809-824. Wiley and Sons.)

"Archiving is a curation activity which ensures that data is properly selected and stored, can be easily accessed and that its logical and physical integrity is maintained over time. Preservation is an archiving activity in which specific items of data are maintained over time so that they can still be accessed and understood through succession and obsolescence of technologies."(From: Lord, P. Macdonald, Lyon & Giaretta (2004) "From data deluge to data curation." Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2004, 31st August - 3rd September, Nottingham UK.)

"This view of curation embraces and goes beyond that of enhanced present-day re-use, and of archival responsibility, to embrace stewardship that adds value through the provision of context and linkage: placing emphasis on publishing data in ways that ease re-use and promoting accountability and integration. Context and linkage are terms rich in intention, with implications for metadata and interoperability. Resource discovery and retrieval requires mark-up with time/place referencing as well as subject description and linkage to discipline-based ontology." (C. Rusbridge, P. Burnhill, S. Ross, P. Buneman, D. Giaretta, L. Lyon, M. Atkinson, 2005, 'The Digital Curation Centre: A Vision for Digital Curation', In Proceedings IEEE's Mass Storage and Systems Technology Committee Conference on From Local to Global: Data Interoperability--Challenges and Technologies)