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The terms “digital curation” and “cyberinfrastructure” have been coined in the last decade to describe distinct but related concepts of how data can be managed, preserved, manipulated and made available for long‐term use. This paper aims to examine these.

The paper considers the origins of both terms and the communities that have been engaged with each of them, traces the development of the present digital environment in the USA and considers what this may mean for the future.

The paper reveals that each term has important attributes that contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the digital knowledge universe.

The paper reveals information about the development of digital preservation.

This study aims to look at the impact for users on university library and information technology services, present and future, following merger.

The study examined user survey data from the early 1990s through the 2006 LibQUAL survey, collected information through interviews with faculty and Information Services, and examined the National Science Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies reports on cyberinfrastructure.

The paper finds that while the merged information services organization is not yet a resounding success from the perspectives of staff in information services or faculty, it is a brave attempt to respond to the future.

This paper is useful to others thinking the organizational relationship between libraries and campus information technology.

This article discusses the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and its potential impact on the development of enhanced digital libraries in the humanities. It focuses on the problems inherent in creating the technological environment needed by humanities scholars and the tools required to build, repurpose, and interact with digital libraries in the humanities.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of development and recent focus on digital curation and ties it to larger cyberinfrastructure initiatives.

Provides a useful viewpoint on the development and recent focus on digital curation.

Digital curation is the active involvement of information professionals in the management, including the preservation, of digital data for future use. While there have been people doing different aspects of data curation and digital preservation for decades, recent events have brought a number of ideas, organizations, and individuals together to focus more intently on digital curation. Reports in the US by the National Science Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and in the UK by Dr Liz Lyon of UKOLN have pointed out the aspects of digital curation which need to be in place to ensure that digital objects can be maintained, preserved, and remain available for future use. These reports along with increased research focus at conferences and the emergence of new educational programs have led to the emergence of digital curation and made digital curators a new entry into the information professions. Increasingly, digital curation is becoming an umbrella concept that includes digital preservation, data curation, electronic records management, and digital asset management.

This article discusses and defines digital curation and notes how this theme has permeated in recent reports, conferences, and educational offerings.

The article synthesizes current digital curation efforts and helps to define this new concept for information professionals.

Purpose – For decades, archivists have been appraising, preserving, and providing access to digital records by using archival theories and methods developed for paper records. However, production and consumption of digital records are informed by social and industrial trends and by computer and data methods that show little or no connection to archival methods. The purpose of this chapter is to reexamine the theories and methods that dominate records practices. The authors believe that this situation calls for a formal articulation of a new transdiscipline, which they call computational archival science (CAS).

Design/Methodology/Approach – After making a case for CAS, the authors present motivating case studies: (1) evolutionary prototyping and computational linguistics; (2) graph analytics, digital humanities, and archival representation; (3) computational finding aids; (4) digital curation; (5) public engagement with (archival) content; (6) authenticity; (7) confluences between archival theory and computational methods: cyberinfrastructure and the records continuum; and (8) spatial and temporal analytics.

Findings – Each case study includes suggestions for incorporating CAS into Master of Library Science (MLS) education in order to better address the needs of today’s MLS graduates looking to employ “traditional” archival principles in conjunction with computational methods. A CAS agenda will require transdisciplinary iSchools and extensive hands-on experience working with cyberinfrastructure to implement archival functions.

Originality/Value – We expect that archival practice will benefit from the development of new tools and techniques that support records and archives professionals in managing and preserving records at scale and that, conversely, computational science will benefit from the consideration and application of archival principles.

The paper seeks to outline the capabilities of cyberinfrastructure (CI) as a new knowledge‐sharing conduit. The article introduces CI properties and parameters that align with KM concepts and principles. It also describes the utilization of a CI framework in facilitating virtual enterprises and their communities. Finally, the article outlines the three major challenges in the way of CI deployment as a knowledge mobilization medium in the public domain.

The article reviews extensive literature on CI from the approach of KM principles. It summarizes the relationship between CI and previous network architectures, and how that contributes to its expected dominance as a new KM platform.

CI can be regarded as the architecture that narrows the historical gap between KM and the bivalent logic technologies. This can be attributed to the fact that it adds people and services to fundamental network components. However, KM practitioners must be cautious in utilizing it to deploy KM programs. This is due to the inherited binary effects, information overloading, and security issues surrounding open, inter‐operable environments.

This overview consists of useful information on an inventive network configuration and its appropriateness as a new KM platform.

This chapter traces the history of digital libraries (DLs) in the United States through the funding sources that have supported DL research and development over the past decade and a half. A set of related questions are addressed: How have the mission and goals of funding agencies affected the types of projects that have been funded? What have been the deliverables from funded projects and how have the goals of the funding agencies shaped those deliverables? Funding agencies have exerted strong influence over research and development in DLs, and different funding agencies have funded different types of projects, with varying sets of concerns for driving the various fields that feed into DLs. This chapter will address the impact that DL funding has had on the development of research in the field of Library and Information Science, as well as on the practice of librarianship.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), its 176th meeting, held February 18‐22, 2010 in San Diego.

Provides an overview of nine presentations as well as internet links (or bibliographic citations) of pertinent research, on each topic covered, for further understanding of the subject matter.

There is plenty of research on which to report.

The paper provides information on the latest research on: current technological advances relating to connectivity to the internet; key questions relating to the voluminous amount of data generated annually; and, how computational science, and its enabling cyberinfrastructure, is tackling some of the “grand challenges” facing science and society today.

To report on the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Washington, DC in February 2005.

An overview of the seminars, symposia, workshops and presentations at the conference.

The theme of the meeting was The Nexus: Where Science Meets Society. The meeting was attended by 4,000 registrants, 105 exhibitors; and 900 members of the press. The meeting highlighted the academic role and infrastructure of technology in different science applications, including publishing, and national policy.

A report of interest to library and information management professionals.