The Journal of Web Librarianship is pleased to announce an upcoming special issue on the topic of data curation

The Journal of Web Librarianship is pleased to announce an upcoming special issue on the topic of data curation, edited by Susan Sharpless Smith.

Data curation, “the active and on-going management of data through its lifecycle of interest and usefulness to scholarly and educational activities across the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities,” is an emerging field that brings new opportunities and challenges for libraries. The growing movement to effectively manage, archive, preserve, retrieve and reuse research data is one that compliments traditional library missions to preserve and access information. This special issue will explore issues surrounding this new arena. The issue’s scope includes but is not limited to:

• Data curation theory and practice
• Roles for research libraries and librarians
• Data storage infrastructures
• Libraries as partners in data curation strategies
• Data stewardship
• Sustainability of long term data management programs
• Ontologies for data integration
• Realizing goals for reuse and combination of datasets
• Education and skills required for data curators
• Discovery and retrieval systems
• Data repositories
• Looking to the future

Susan Smith is  Director of Research, Instruction & Technology Services / Senior Librarian at Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University.  She recently completed the third edition of Web-based instruction: A guide for libraries (Chicago: American Library Association) and has published numerous articles and book chapters.

Query letters and preliminary proposals are welcome any time if potential authors would like to discuss their ideas with the issue editor. Please submit queries and manuscripts to guest editor Susan Smith at jwl.curation@gmail.com. Please refer to the JWL web site, http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/jwl for Instructions for Authors.

Issue Timeline:
Initial Manuscript Submission deadline: January 1, 2012

Notices to authors: April, 2012

Final Acceptance: June, 2012

Issue Publication: October, 2012

The Journal of Web Librarianship
Susan Smith, Special Issue Editor
Jody Condit Fagan, Editor
Email:     jwl.curation@gmail.com

Website: http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/ jwl/