DCN Releases 2024 Annual Report

Today we release our 2024 Annual Report. As with previous years, our community continued to show up for one another through shared curation, educational opportunities, and cross-institutional collaboration. 

This year, we welcomed six new institutional members, including five through the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)-led, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)-funded Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) research initiative. Across our now 25 member institutions, we curated more than 60 datasets through our shared curation workflow, and we welcomed 14 new curators — with a few more currently finishing their DCN onboarding! 

We continued to offer educational opportunities to our colleagues nationally and internationally, this year bringing the abbreviated CURATE(D) workshop to Halifax, Nova Scotia as part of the IASSIST programming! We once again collaborated with the National Center for Data Services (NCDS) to host three interns over the summer — one of whom has already presented on her experience and research. Excitingly, the IMLS-funded cohorts, as part of the grant, “Developing Specialized Data Curation Training to Address Needed Expertise in Focused Areas,” published open curriculum materials for curating code, GIS, scientific images, and simulations data. These are available in both GitHub and the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy.

As will be important moving forward, we were particularly strong advocates for institutional data services. Through funding from the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy, in collaboration with MITRE, we hosted the “Summit for Academic Institutional Readiness in Data Sharing (STAIRS),” and authored a final report with recommendations for funding agencies, institutions, and others involved in research data sharing. We collaboratively authored a letter to Science about the importance of institutional data services (building off a related blog post from Duke University Libraries), and published an article in Data Science about data sharing in academic institutional repositories. 
While there is a lot more covered in the annual report, we can never fully capture in writing the interactions between members: in-person at our All Hands Meeting, virtually in special interest group meetings, even with many emojis in our Slack space. Amidst the ongoing uncertainty, we are fortunate to have thoughtful colleagues, eager to affect change and willing to advocate for one another. Here’s to 2025, and embracing every chance we have to implement Slow Curation.