Researchers are creating and using scientific data at unprecedented levels, underscoring the need for curators, or caretakers, to ensure that this massive amount of vital information is being maintained for important research. To help meet this need, Indiana University, through a joint effort between its Data to Insight Center and IU Libraries, has been selected as a partner institution in the Council on Library and Information Resources/Digital Library Federation Data Curation Fellowship Program. The programme is made possible by a $679,827 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
This joint effort by the Data to Insight Center and the IU Libraries takes advantage of a natural partnership and draws on synergies between the two organisations.
The Council on Library and Information Resources is now recruiting six data curation fellows in cooperation with its partner institutions - Indiana University; Lehigh University; McMaster University; Purdue University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Michigan.
The two-year, postdoctoral fellowships will encourage the development of highly skilled and knowledgeable specialists in data curation for the natural and social sciences. IU's fellow will work with the Sustainable Environment-Actionable Data project, a major National Science Foundation-funded DataNet project, and the HathiTrust Research Center, both joint ventures of the Data to Insight Center and the IU Libraries.
The fellowship's creation coincides with the Obama administration's recent announcement of the ‘Big Data Research and Development Initiative,’ which recognises the importance of training the next generation of data scientists.
The grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will fund one year of the two-year award. The award is being supplemented by funding from the Data to Insight Center and IU Libraries to create a two-year postdoctoral fellow experience.
