Jake Carlson
Director of Deep Blue Repository & Research Data Services
University of Michigan
Wind Cowles
Director, Research Data and Open Scholarship
Princeton University
Lisa Johnston
Director Of Data Governance
University of Wisconsin
Mikala Narlock
Director, Data Curation Network
University of Minnesota
In 2016, six academic libraries initiated the Data Curation Network (DCN) as an experimental model for collaboratively curating data sets deposited into their institutional repositories. The DCN model is centered on “radical interdependence,” opening up access to the expertise of the data curators at any one institution to all participating member libraries. Under this model, DCN member institutions leverage the collective knowledge and skills of all member curators, creating a greater capacity to curate more data more effectively than any one institution could by itself. The DCN is now a thriving community and has grown to 17 member institutions. The DCN recently conducted a project retrospective to better understand the enabling structures and tools that allowed the network to thrive. Representatives from member institutions were asked to reflect on their experiences in developing the DCN and what elements contributed to its success. We asked them to consider not just the structures, tools, and workflows that we collectively designed, but the more intangible aspects of the DCN, such as generating trust, acknowledging vulnerability, and community building. This session will explore the key enabling structures of “radical interdependence” that were identified by DCN members as well as a discussion on how these structures could potentially be applied to other cross-institutional or multidisciplinary collaborations.
