Data curation in avian ecology: a case study from both the scientist’s and librarian's viewpoints.

Abstract

This case study of a data curation project, which is currently in progress, demonstrates how a team of scientists has worked, in partnership with librarians, to plan to preserve their scientific output in an institutional repository. In addition, this case study offers a unique perspective. The author worked as one of the scientists in this particular research group for 10 years and is currently a science librarian working on this data curation project. As a result, the author has been an “insider” in discussions in both the scientist and librarian camps and provides viewpoints from both the scientist and librarian lenses.

The research group in this case study is the Ketterson/Nolan Research Group, a team of avian biologists in the Department of Biology Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This research team has focused on the ecology, behavior, and physiology of a songbird, the dark-eyed junco. The research output from this group’s long-term (thirty year) study on this single species of songbird has resulted in rich data sets of a variety of subjects (e.g. population demographics, behavioral observations, DNA records, and natural history).

The research group and librarians are working toward more than just the preservation of data, but also the preservation of accompanying descriptive documents that place this large body of work into historical and educational contexts. Described within this case study are preliminary issues that the scientists and librarians have worked through as they have moved to preserve the research output in the library’s institutional repository.