Charleston Seminars: Introduction to Data Curation 

Sponsored by: 

Libraries and archives are increasingly responsible for curation of digital data. This includes not only acquiring and managing data but curation within the context of libraries and archives. This workshop will be an interactive event, including a combination of lecture, discussion, and also engagement with data creators and facilitating new forms of research through data use. It will provide participants with an introduction to the primary opportunities, challenges, principles and strategies for addressing data practical exercises.

There are two registration options: Certificate Program, and Non-Certificate Program. Participants who wish to engage in a specific project of interest can work with an instructor to do so. These participants will receive a certificate of accomplishment from the School of Information and Library Science UNC-Chapel Hill and the Charleston Conference following the completion of their project work and approval from the supervising faculty.

Instructors:

• Jonathan Crabtree

Jonathan Crabtree is Assistant Director for Archives and Information Technology at the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at UNC Chapel Hill. As assistant director, Crabtree completely revamped the institute’s technology infrastructure and has positioned the institute to assume a leading national role in information archiving. His current efforts include working with the University of Michigan, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University and preservation partners across the country to create a national preservation strategy for social science data and shaping the institute’s geospatial analysis program to introduce geospatial methods into social science research at UNC Chapel Hill. Crabtree’s twenty two years of experience in information technology and networking as well as his engineering background bring a different perspective to his current role.

Crabtree joined the institute twenty years ago and is responsible for designing and maintaining the technology infrastructure that supports the institute’s wide array of services. Before moving to the social science side of campus he was an information systems technologist for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. His grounding in medical information technology adds to his education and training in electrical engineering, computer science, economics, information & library science, geographic information systems, hydrology and geomorphology. In addition to his work at the institute he is working part time on an advance degree in the School of Information & Library Science here at UNC. He has local roots here in the Chapel Hill area and is active in the volunteer community. His recent efforts include chairing the building committee for Woods Charter School which has resulted in an exciting new educational facility for the community as well as volunteering as a scoutmaster in a local Boy Scout troop. 

• Christopher (Cal) Lee

Christopher (Cal) Lee is Associate Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He teaches courses on archival administration; records management; digital curation; understanding information technology for managing digital collections; and digital forensics.  He is a lead organizer and instructor for the DigCCurr Professional Institute, and he teaches professional workshops on the application of digital forensics methods and principles to digital acquisitions.

Cal’s primary area of research is the curation of digital collections. He is particularly interested in the professionalization of this work and the diffusion of existing tools and methods into professional practice. Cal developed “A Framework for Contextual Information in Digital Collections,” and edited and provided several chapters to I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era published by the Society of American Archivists.

Cal is Principal Investigator of BitCurator, which is developing and disseminating open-source digital forensics tools for use by archivists and librarians.  He was also Principal Investigator of the Digital Acquisition Learning Laboratory (DALL) project and is Senior Personnel on the DataNet Federation Consortium funded by the National Science Foundation.  Cal has served as Co-PI on several projects focused on digital curation education: Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum (DigCCurr), DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners; Educating Stewards of Public Information for the 21st Century (ESOPI-21), Educating Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure (ESOPI2), and Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG).