DigitalKoans

Presentations from the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories' Open Access Collections workshop are now available. Presentations are in HTML/PDF, MP3, and digital video formats. The workshop was held in association with the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation and the University of Queensland Library.

The Oxford e-Research Centre has released Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management, a project plan for determining the requirements for handling data in a federated digital repository at Oxford University.

Here's an excerpt from the "Aims and Objectives" section:

Objectives:

• Capture and document researchers’ requirements for digital repository services to handle research data.
• Participate actively in the development of an interoperability framework for the federated digital repository at Oxford.
• Make recommendations to improve and coordinate the provision of digital repository services for research data.
• Initiate and develop collaborations with the different repository activities already occurring to ensure that communication takes place in between them.
• Raise awareness at Oxford of the importance and advantages of the active management of research data.
• Communicate significant national and international developments in repositories to relevant Oxford stakeholders, in order to stimulate the adoption of best practices.

The DataShare project has released two recent presentations about its activities: "Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)" and "Guidelines and Tools for Repository Planning and Assessment." A recent briefing paper, The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Institutional Repositories, is also available.

Here's a description of the DataShare project from its home page:

DISC-UK DataShare, led by EDINA, arises from an existing UK consortium of data support professionals working in departments and academic libraries in universities (Data Information Specialists Committee-UK), and builds on an international network with a tradition of data sharing and data archiving dating back to the 1960s in the social sciences. By working together across four universities and internally with colleagues already engaged in managing open access repositories for e-prints, this partnership will introduce and test a new model of data sharing and archiving to UK research institutions. By supporting academics within the four partner institutions who wish to share datasets on which written research outputs are based, this network of institution-based data repositories develops a niche model for deposit of 'orphaned datasets' currently filled neither by centralised subject-domain data archives/centres/grids nor by e-print based institutional repositories (IRs).

JISC’s DataShare project has released The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Institutional Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

One of the key issues present in IRs is dealing with the description of items held in the repository. Data are not different from other digital materials and need to be described not just for discovery but also for preservation and reuse. The social science data archiving community has been working for many years on a metadata standard to describe datasets, and a new version is about to be published, the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) 3.0.

This document reports back from the DDI 3 workshop "Using DDI 3.0 to Support Preservation, Management, Access and Dissemination Systems for Social Science Data" held at the Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany in November 2007. It intends to present the DDI standard to repository managers, data librarians and data managers and provide background information to help them to examine how the DDI fits with developments in their institutional repositories for research-generated data. The report discusses the appropriateness of using the different DDI versions to address the requirements of research data in IRs. It brings together some of the key questions of the DataShare project with regards to access management, linking to other materials and versioning of datasets.

JISC has released DISC-UK DataShare: Web 2.0 Data Visualisation Tools: Part 1—Numeric Data.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

Part 1 of this briefing paper will highlight some examples of new collaborative web services using Web 2.0 technologies which venture into the numeric data visualisation arena. These mashups allow researchers to upload and analyse their own data in ‘open’ and dynamic environments. Broadly speaking the numeric data being referred to could be micro-data (data about the individual), macro-data2 or country-level data, derived or summary data.

The Research Information Network (RIN) has published Stewardship of Digital Research Data: A Framework of Principles and Guidelines: Responsibilities of Research Institutions and Funders, Data Managers, Learned Societies and Publishers.

Here's an excerpt from the Web page describing the document:

Research data are an increasingly important and expensive output of the scholarly research process, across all disciplines. . . . But we shall realise the value of data only if we move beyond research policies, practices and support systems developed in a different era. We need new approaches to managing and providing access to research data.

In order to address these issues, the RIN established a group to produce a framework of key principles and guidelines, and we consulted on a draft document in 2007. The framework is founded on the fundamental policy objective that ideas and knowledge, including data, derived from publicly-funded research should be made available for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable. . . .

The framework is structured around five broad principles which provide a guide to the development of policy and practice for a range of key players: universities, research institutions, libraries and other information providers, publishers, and research funders as well as researchers themselves. Each of these principles serves as a basis for a series of questions which serve a practical purpose by pointing to how the various players might address the challenges of effective data stewardship.

Presentations from eResearch Australasia 2007 are now available.

Here are selected presentations:

• "Andrew Treloar: Supporting the e-Research Lifecycle from Acquisition through to Annotation: the DART/ARCHER Experience"
• "Brian Fitzgerald and Scott Kiel-Chisholm: The Legal Framework for e-Research Project"
• "Ian Johnson: Beyond Bibliographies: Integrating Research Data in a Unified Collaborative Framework"
• "Jane Hunter: Harvesting Community Tags and Annotations to Augment Institutional Repository Metadata"
• "Keith Webster: eResearch and the Future of Research Libraries"
• "Kerry Kilner: The Resource for Australian Literature"
• "Paul Arthur: Going Digital: Humanities and the eResearch Revolution"
• "Richard Levy and Austin McLean, ProQuest: Institutional Repositories: A Gateway to e-Research"
• "Ross Coleman: A Maturing Partnership: eHumanities and the Digital Library"
• "Sarah Howard and John Byron: Humanities Technologies: Research Methods and ICT Use by Humanities Researchers"
• "Toby Burrows and Elzbieta Majocha: Building Infrastructures for Web-based Collaboration in Humanities Research Networks"

The Australian eResearch Infrastructure Council has released Towards the Australian Data Commons: A Proposal for an Australian National Data Service.

Here's an excerpt from the "Overview":

This paper is designed to encourage, inform and ultimately summarise the discussions around the appropriate strategic and technical descriptions of the Australian National Data Service; to fill in the outline in the Platforms for Collaboration investment plan.

To do so, the paper:

• introduces the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) and the driving forces behind its creation;
• provides a rationale for the services that ANDS will provide, and the programs through which the services will be offered; and
• describes in detail the ANDS programs.

Part One (Background) provides a brief summary of the reasons to focus on data management, as well as an overview of ANDS, and identifies some issues associated with implementation.

Part Two (Rationale) sets out the systemic issues associated with achieving a research data commons, and provides the resultant rationale for the services that ANDS will offer the programs that they will be delivered through.

Part Three (Detailed Descriptions of ANDS Programs) sets out in detail the Aim, Focus, Service Beneficiaries, Products and Community Engagement activities for each of the ANDS Programs.

Campus Technology has published an interview with Michael Keller about the Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group.