The Graduate School of Library and Information Science has been awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services totaling $988,543. The purpose of the grant is to develop a sustainable and transferable model for educating library and information science master’s and doctoral students in data curation through field experiences in research and data centers.
GSLIS is collaborating with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences on “Data Curation Education in Research Centers,” a new educational initiative to establish and implement graduate research and education programs in scientific data curation. The program will enable students to enrich their studies by engaging with current practices and challenges in scientific research centers and to share their developing expertise and research with each other and other students in their respective programs.
“Through our partnership with NCAR, Illinois will advance doctoral research, and Tennessee will extend its master’s program to train a cadre of information professionals and researchers whom we expect to be leaders in the emerging field of data curation and be key players in developing cyberinfrastructure to support scientific research,” said Carole Palmer, a UI professor of library and information science and principal investigator of the project. The program addresses the lag in library and information science research capacity, and the mounting, critical need for scientific data curation professionals. Students will work with domain scientists and data managers at NCAR during their course of study, providing an exceptional opportunity to learn and contribute in the real world of data intensive science.
