The CLARIN-NL Data Curation Service: Bringing Data to the Foreground

Abstract

After decades in which a great deal of effort was spent on the creation of resources, there are currently several initiatives worldwide that aim to create an interoperable, sustainable research infrastructure. An integral part of such an infrastructure constitutes the resources (data and tools) which researchers in the various disciplines employ. Whether the infrastructure will be successful in supporting the needs of the research communities it intends to cater for depends on a number of factors. One factor is that resources that are or could be relevant to the wider research community are made visible through this infrastructure and, to the greatest extent possible, accessible and usable. In practice, the durable availability of resources is often not properly regulated within research projects.

CLARIN-NL is directed at creating an interoperable language resources infrastructure for the humanities in the Netherlands. The Data Curation Service was established in order to salvage language resources in this field that are threatened to be lost. In the CLARIN context, a great deal of attention is given to standards, formats and intellectual property rights. Consequently, the Data Curation Service (DCS) has a role as mediator in bringing researchers in the field of humanities and existing data centres closer together.

This article consists of two parts: the first part provides the background to the work of the DCS while the second part illustrates the work of the DCS by describing the actual curation of a collection of language learner data.