Abstract
Digital/data curation curricula have been around for a couple of decades. Currently, several ALA-accredited LIS programs offer digital/data curation courses and certificate programs to address the high demand for professionals with the knowledge and skills to handle digital content and research data in an ever-changing information environment. In this study, we aimed to examine the topical scopes of digital/data curation curricula in the context of the LIS field. We collected 16 syllabi from the digital/data curation courses, as well as textual descriptions of the 11 programs and their core courses offered in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. The collected data were analyzed using a probabilistic topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, to identify both common and unique topics. The results are the identification of 20 topics both at the program- and course-levels. Comparison between the program- and course-level topics uncovered a set of unique topics, and a number of common topics. Furthermore, we provide interactive visualizations for digital/data curation programs and courses for further analysis of topical distributions. We believe that our combined approach of a topic modeling and visualizations may provide insight for identifying emerging trends and co-occurrences of topics among digital/data curation curricula in the LIS field.
Highlights
Curricula related to digital and/or data curation, is not new to the feld of library and information science
We found that our integrated approach of topic modeling and visualization using the program- and course-level descriptions was an effective approach for uncovering and presenting the topical scopes of digital/data curation programs and courses currently offered
As we introduced in the Results section, the 20 topics from digital/data curation curricula can be broadly classifed into the fve high-level categories: System; Technology; Content; Policy and strategy; and Future trend
Summary
Curricula related to digital and/or data curation, is not new to the feld of library and information science. Data Management for Clinical Research, taught by Stephany Duda and Paul Harris at Vanderbilt University, U.S (offered by Coursera.com). The key phrase “data curation” returns 7,420 results, “research data management” returns 1.13 million results, and “digital preservation” returns approximately 227,000 video resources. While such a proliferation of digital/data curation curricula has provided benefts to the community in curating and managing traditional digital objects and digital research data, the broad scopes and overlapping nature, of digital and data curation curricula has increased the potential complexity and confusion in selecting topics that can cover each curriculum comprehensively. Students who are taking those courses may have unbalanced knowledge in digital or data curation
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