How does this Primer work?

• The best practices outlined here can be applied across the broad spectrum of digital humanities (DH) methodologies.

• This Primer will be most useful to experienced humanist researchers, working in Canada or with Canadian funding or research affiliation, who wish to improve their data curation strategies for collecting, managing, and publishing digital files and formats alongside traditional textual scholarship.

• The focus of this guide is collections-based methodologies that make a distinction between research materials such as physical archives that may not belong to the researcher; and the research data that the researcher may produce and publish.

• This Primer is an overview of the different aspects of data curation and management best practices. Its intention is to get you started on thinking about how to integrate best practices into your projects. It is not a step-by-step guide, but we do provide you with useful, technical guides in the appendix.

• This Primer outlines how the Data Flow and Discovery Model helps digital humanists assess and plan their data curation and management needs as an iterative process that can be conducted throughout the life of their research project.

• This Primer is researcher-centred; each section begins with questions that were raised in workshop breakout groups. Those questions were then mapped onto relevant sections of the data work-flow tool to create a conceptual model that follows best practices in data management. It is important to note, however, that while the Primer is researcher centered, the researcher is just one actor in the flow of data; they are not the sole decision taker, nor the central one, when it comes to data curation planning.

• The SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb partnership is used as an example throughout the Primer to illustrate how best practices were followed and incorporated into a data curation project. Case study examples will appear in separate sections throughout the Primer  to illustrate key data curation strategies

We acknowledge that this Primer is written from the perspective of settler librarians and academics. We also acknowledge the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty, and strive to develop and abide by principles that recognize and respect First Nations, Inuit and Métis People’s rights of data sovereignty, self-determination, and self-government through a distinctions-based approach (Taken from the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy – whose policies should not supersede First Nation, Métis and Inuit laws, protocols, and policies).

We also acknowledge that digital humanities and data curation management methods have had their roots in oppressive practices or frameworks towards other historically excluded or marginalized communities. Again, we strive to guide researchers towards using non-oppressive approaches to data curation.