What Does a Data Curator Do?

Businesses, organizations, universities, and governments all create immense sets of valuable data through their daily processes. But who is responsible for sorting and organizing all that data? If you’re curious about this type of work, you might consider pursuing a career as a data curator. Like a museum curator working with priceless paintings, a data curator is a professional who helps to preserve important data for future access.

Furthermore, the worldwide appetite for data generates massive amounts of money because, according to Statista, “The global big data market is forecasted to grow to 103 billion US dollars by 2027, more than double its expected market size in 2018 [1].” Since a variety of industries, such as health care, laboratories, colleges, and businesses, use data curation, a career in this field might provide you with many job opportunities from which to choose.

Discover more about careers as a data curator, the benefits of data curation, the type of education required, and the average annual data curator salary.

What is data curation?

Data curation is the process of actively managing data throughout its entire lifecycle, from creation to deletion. This system ensures the preservation of the data in a way that makes it accessible and easily retrievable for those who want to use it. Data curation tends to involve digital and generated data. However, data curation isn’t only about preserving the data itself but also about the methods the data curator uses to gather the data and the purpose behind the data. These data sets are typically preserved for future analytical purposes to increase your understanding of a certain subject. If you own a business, this organized information can assist you in making an important decision.

What is a data curator?

If you choose to work as a data curator, you would most likely be responsible for maintaining, organizing, and improving the accessibility of an organization’s data. Typically, in this role, you would be responsible for gathering newly created data and working with previously created data. Like museum curators or librarians, a data curator not only collects data for storage but also seeks to categorize and explain it. Providing context and accurate descriptions makes the data easier to access. It also helps those who want to utilize the data, such as analysts or researchers, interact with it properly.

Why is data curation important?

Data curation is important because, in this role, you could help to add value to data sets through accurate organization and descriptive metadata. Also, rather than presenting information in a vacuum, data curation adds context. It’s contextualized to make it accessible to the right audiences. Data curation introduces a formal structure to the immense volumes of data created by organizations, which means that data scientists working at a company, for example, could more easily access the information for analytical purposes. Data curation also makes data retrievable and inaccessible while maintaining its quality and preserving its ability to be re-used.

What does a data curator do?

Generally, a data curator’s job is to manage data as it travels through its lifecycle from creation to deletion. As the curator, you would probably focus on ensuring the data is accessible, retrievable, high-quality, and available within context.

Tasks and responsibilities

The specific tasks and responsibilities of a data curator may vary based on the industry and organization you work for, but some typical tasks and responsibilities include:

• Review and inventory data sets

• Work with professionals across departments to gather and dispense data

• Examine data for quality and determine if it has further use

• Accurately cite data sets to give proper credit

• Clean data to maintain its quality and value

• Ensure long-term usability of data through proper preservation methods

• Accurately track curation processes using a copy while preserving raw data

Data curator skills

Data curators typically need skills to identify, describe, sort, and preserve data sets. Some examples of these skills include:

Technical skills

• Research skills

• Data enrichment (adding context and connecting data to related sources)

• Data management (verifying, naming, cleaning, and converting data)

• Data description (using vocabulary and a set of standards to create metadata)

• Deposit or publish (method for storing data properly)

• Apply analytical skills to existing research

• Programming knowledge

• Strong grasp of data modeling

Workplace skills

• Attention to detail

• Communication skills for sharing information effectively in presentations

• Ability to collaborate with other data professionals as well as stakeholders

Data curator salary and job outlook

Like other curator roles, data curators are in high demand and are seeing a lot of growth in several industries, such as health care, business, scientific research, and artistic expression. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the area of the economy where data curators operate is expected to grow 35 percent from 2022 to 2032, which is much faster than average [2]. If you’re considering this career, the average annual salary for a data curator is $66,141 [3].

Data curator career path

Since “data curator” is a relatively new career, you can approach this job from several angles. A survey of people in this position found they held bachelor’s degrees in humanities, social sciences, sciences, and engineering. Therefore, even if you began your career in one direction, you can shift into this field by earning a certificate or obtaining a master’s degree. 

For example, you might consider a certificate in digital curation from the University of North Texas, or you can pursue a master’s degree in library science with a focus in data curation from the University of Washington. If you prefer to earn a degree online, the University of North Carolina offers a master’s in digital curation and management. Finally, maybe you are about to begin your undergraduate degree and believe data curation is your field. In this case, you might consider earning a bachelor’s in information science because it deals with the creation of information and its organization, management, storage, collection, and application. Additionally, this degree combines aspects of computer science, library science, and information management, which seem to connect to the job description of a data curator.

After obtaining your bachelor’s degree or maybe even your master’s, you can begin searching for a position working as a data curator. Fortunately, because this skill set is applicable across many forms of data, you can choose from various industries to begin your career, such as health care, scientific research, finance, and the public sector, to name a few. 

Additional education and training 

Even after you’ve begun working in this field, you might consider acquiring certificates to help further your knowledge base and expand your abilities. Many universities are offering certificates in this specialty to account for the lack of data curators in this growing profession. 

Learn more with Coursera.

If you’ve decided that a career in data curation might be for you, you can explore the skill set for this position and discover more about the foundational knowledge of data management with courses and Professional Certificates on Coursera.

With options such as Google’s Foundations: Data, Data Everywhere, a course that’s part of the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, you can imagine what a career in data curation might look like. Explore Coursera and discover courses and Professional Certificates across various industries and interests.