Making Research Data Public: Workshopping Data Curation for Digital Humanities Projects

A lack of formal training opportunities for data curation in multi-site DH teams means that the data produced in these teams is in danger of being lost! This four-hour workshop will cover all areas of data management including: IP permissions and informed consent, data collection, metadata standards, file sharing, preservation (data deposit), and data sharing through the open data spectrum of access. Participants will work on their own data curation challenges in break-out sessions and with reference to case study examples presented by a panel of DH scholars and digital asset management specialists: Constance Crompton (uOttawa), Karis Shearer (UBCO), Matthew Lincoln (Carnegie-Mellon U), Mikhel Proulx (Concordia U and Indigenous Digital Art Archive), Meghan Goodchild (Queen’s U and Scholars Portal). The lesson plan is designed and delivered by Felicity Tayler (uOttawa), Sarah Simpkin (uOttawa), and Marjorie Mitchell (UBCO).This workshop is a good preparation for researchers who must create a data management plan to comply with funding agency requirements. The workshop arises at a moment when DH researchers have greater access to funding to support large-scale multi-partner projects with diverse digital assets. The manifold nature of DH, and its reflexive challenges to culturally imposed power imbalances in digital systems presents unique challenges for data curation. Responding to the conference thematic of cultural and disciplinary intersections, this workshop proposes that DH is one of the social and conceptual spaces where the informal networks of international “data communities” arise through acts of data curation and sharing (Cooper and Springer). Our approach to data curation recognizes that data communities are multilingual and multi-cultural just as they cross epistemological and disciplinary lines.