Data management curation: lessons from government, academia, and research

The management, publication, and preservation of datasets have become issues of increasing importance for universities, research institutions, and government agencies. While the reasons and mandates for these activities, and the kinds of datasets collected, differ among these types of institutions, other aspects of data management throughout the research lifecycle concern all of them, including (but not limited to): the discoverability of their data; the choice of metadata standard(s) and the creation of metadata; providing visualization and interaction with data; selection and migration of data formats for long-term preservation; policy development; and storage requirements. Yet, these types of institutions tend to follow different paths in data management and curation, choose different infrastructures, metadata standards and platforms. Are these different approaches inevitably rooted in the differences between these types of organizations and their missions and culture? Or are there lessons they could learn from each other to improve their own practice? The purpose of this symposium is to explore that question. We will have presentations first, then form breakout groups along the lines of different aspects such as platform choice, policy developments, metadata creation. At the end, all will come back together to share the results of their discussion.