The college of information science of the university of arizona will develop a plan to support the curation of data and metadata related to physical samples such as rocks, fossils, biological…

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the University of Arizona $398,900 on September 1, 2026, under the National Leadership Grants program (CFDA 45.312) to develop a plan supporting the curation of data and metadata related to physical samples including rocks, fossils, biological specimens, and water samples. The College of Information Science will develop guidelines, training modules, and data management software to enable this work. The project will conduct needs analysis activities including surveys of research data services librarians and sample users, follow-up focus groups, and hands-on curation case studies with project partners. The recipient will conduct multiple workshops with data curation librarians, sample users, and infrastructure developers to build community. The effort will assess how data curation librarians can advance open science and data reuse in natural science fields relying on physical samples. Work is performed in Tucson, Arizona, with a period of performance from September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2028.

The college of information science of the university of arizona will develop a plan to support the curation of data and metadata related to physical samples such as rocks, fossils, biological specimens, and water samples, etc. The project will develop guidelines, training modules, and data management software to enable this work. IT will conduct multiple needs analysis activities, including surveys of research data services librarians and sample user/curators, follow-up focus groups, and hands-on curation case studies with project partners. The project seeks to build community through multiple workshops with data curation librarians, sample users, and infrastructure developers. The effort will assess how data curation librarians can advance open science and data reuse for in natural science fields that rely on physical samples.