Data curators play an important role in assessing data quality and take actions that may ultimately lead to better, more valuable data products. This study explores the curation practices of data curators working within US-based data repositories. We performed a survey in January 2021 to benchmark the levels of curation performed by repositories and assess the perceived value and impact of curation on the data sharing process. Our analysis included 95 responses from 59 unique data repositories. Respondents primarily were professionals working within repositories and examined curation performed within a repository setting. A majority 72.6% of respondents reported that data-level curation was performed by their repository and around half reported their repository took steps to ensure interoperability and reproducibility of their repositorys datasets. Curation actions most frequently reported include checking for duplicate files, reviewing documentation, reviewing metadata, minting persistent identifiers, and checking for corrupt/broken files. The most value-add curation action across generalist, institutional, and disciplinary repository respondents was related to reviewing and enhancing documentation. Respondents reported high perceived impact of curation by their repositories on specific data sharing outcomes including usability, findability, understandability, and accessibility of deposited datasets; respondents associated with disciplinary repositories tended to perceive higher impact on most outcomes. Most survey participants strongly agreed that data curation by the repository adds value to the data sharing process and that it outweighs the effort and cost. We found some differences between institutional and disciplinary repositories, both in the reported frequency of specific curation actions as well as the perceived impact of data curation. Interestingly, we also found variation in the perceptions of those working within the same repository regarding the level and frequency of curation actions performed, which exemplifies the complexity of a repository curation work. Our results suggest data curation may be better understood in terms of specific curation actions and outcomes than broadly defined curation levels and that more research is needed to understand the resource implications of performing these activities. We share these results to provide a more nuanced view of curation, and how curation impacts the broader data lifecycle and data sharing behaviors.
Review of "Essential Handbook of Women's Sexuality" by Donna Castañeda, ed.,
Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.
Review of The Rights of Women: The Authoritative ACLU Guide to Women’s Rights, edited by Lenora M. Lapidus, Emily J. Martin and Nmaita Luthra. 4th ed.
Review of Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol
In an era of transformative agreements for journals, the article examines the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project through a transformative lens. How might we apply transformativeness to open access monograph publishing? Is transformativeness measured in strictly financial and transactional terms, or should more qualitative measures be considered; and, if so, what might those measures be? Centering academic values, scaling small, fostering communities of practice, production efficiencies, and collaboration are characteristics of the COPIM Project. Libraries and universities committed to academic values are called on to align both the direction of their scholarly communication programs and the principles underlying their collection development policies around a reimagined and transformative open access monograph publishing system that aims higher, beyond transaction-based cost transparencies.
My story begins back in 1793 when November Caldwell was “gifted” to Helen Hogg Hooper (whose father-in-law, William Hooper, signed the Declaration of Independence), the wife of the first president of UNC–Chapel Hill, Joseph Caldwell. November Caldwell is my great-great-great-grandfather. Currently, I owe over six figures in student-loan debt to the very institution that enslaved my ancestors. We are at a particular place in the political history of our nation. White supremacy is morally corrupt. It requires that we deny the humanity of human beings for one reason or another. It is hard to stand up against white supremacy because folks who do are often ostracized from their families and communities. We have all been socialized to believe in white supremacy—it was one of our nation’s founding principles. In this essay I hope to break open a dialogue about the white supremacist hegemony institutionalized within our neoliberal university system. Connecting the past atrocities of slavery with actual educational experiences of the descendants of those who served the proslavery institutions has not been widely publicized or talked about. We must interrogate our history or we will be doomed to continue to repeat the horrific inhumane atrocities.
What is the nature of ultimate evil? Answers will vary, but it is logical to say that they will depend on what one considers to be the core of humanity: that which attacks that core is the ultimate evil. Evidence in Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" mythos and J. R. R. Tolkien's "Middle-earth" mythos suggests that they both saw free will at the core of humanity, and that ultimate evil lies in the domination and subjugation of the will of others. Kirby symbolized this evil in the "Anti-Life Equation"; Tolkien in the One Ring of Sauron. This paper will compare the images of evil in the two authors' works.
Blog post: At the Arnhold-Punctum Publishing Lab at UCSB Library, undergraduate students are doing the work of publishing scholarly monographs. The unusual cohort of academics responsible for the launch and success of this Lab believes that the future of scholarly publishing is a collaborative, community-based, mission-driven, and service-oriented endeavor that engages teams with a range of skills, knowledge, expertise, and resources.
