Developing a data curation service: Step #1: Work with what you've got

EDITOR'S SUMMARY The mandate by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to improve access to federally funded research makes responsible data curation by academic libraries more important than ever. Libraries should provide curation services covering not only deposit and access but also appraisal, description, metadata creation, format transformation, archiving and preservation. A data curation pilot project by the University of Minnesota Libraries demonstrated an effective workflow model to curate research data and facilitate its reuse. Five research datasets were selected for the pilot, each analyzed by a separate team of library, information and technology professionals. The pilot provided groundwork for more robust data curation services and identified necessary support infrastructure.