The processes of creation and expression of scientific, social, and humanistic inspirations are culminating in a vast corpus of stunning and even life-changing documents, films, recordings, Web sites, and other media, including software. Advances in technology have enabled new kinds of scholarship--the most obvious and profound impact is occurring in the realm of science. Science is an interwoven system of experimentation, observation, verification, and replication that demands access to durable research results. Investigations into scholarly communication and research practices have brought attention to the evolving conduct of science. Service opportunities have been revealed for supporting the research process, sustaining and capturing the non-published conversations of science, and curating the resulting data. An ARL workshop in 2006 elicited many salient issues regarding data curation, and a new body of literature has been building. Recent developments offer compelling reasons to engage in the future of data. With much new knowledge now being derived from creative interdisciplinary research and collaboration--dependent on data and produced and presented in evolving forms and formats--librarians will have to embrace the role of data curator to remain relevant and vital to scholars. At present, librarians do not have many models to guide them in constructing appropriate services. In this article, the author discusses the imperative for data curation which demands that libraries keep these valuable assets viable and shareable across fields and for generations yet to come. The accomplishment of this monumental task requires a community effort with many aspects. (Contains 10 notes.)