Biocollections Data Curation Survey

The study used a survey of collection managers to address the study’s purpose of understanding perspectives on curation of biocollections. The current perspectives on curation and behaviors in practice on the most important access and reuse facets could inform the design of the cyberinfrastructure tools and services to improve reusability of all physical collections and associated resulting data. The study population included collection managers and curators and other museum professionals that directly manage biocollections data. The 21 question survey included job analyses questions as well as assessing data curation tasks and perspectives on metadata. The study addressed the following research questions:<br>What are the characteristics of curator and collection managers?What are the storage, access, and reuse practices for biocollections?What are the challenging DarwinCore metadata implementations?Who are the users of this data?The results can inform the building of a machine-actionable research data cyberinfrastructure to increase data access and reuse for this community of practice. The study received Institutional Review Board approval (UTK IRB-25-09083-XM: Biocollections Data Curation Survey). Three big organizations/Professional Societies capture most of this population, Biodiversity Information Standards, formerly Taxonomic Data Working Group (TDWG) which is the abbreviation they still prefer, iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections) and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC). After IRB approval in September 2025, the survey was distributed to email Listservs commonly used by collection managers and curators from those organizations and several others that are discipline specific: NHCOLL, iDigBio, Mammal, ECN (Entomology). In October 2025, a reminder was sent to the same email lists.