Interagency Data Stewardship/LifeCycle/Preservation Forum/TeleconNotes/20090513
Preservation and Stewardship Telecon May 13, 2009
Attending
Ruth Duerr, Mark Parsons, Brian ?, James Frew, Mike Folk, Bruce Barkstrom, John Scioldione, Rob Raskin, Steve Berrick, Bob Downs
Began meeting by logging onto DimDim in order to be able to see the webpages that were being discussed during the meeting.
Review of summer meeting plans
The agenda for this summer's ESIP meeting was reviewed. Under the technologies heading Fedora and Duraspace folks will present their technologies in person; as will Reagan Moore on IRODS. Vicki will give a presentation on LOCKSS. They don’t have funds to attend but are prepared to do it online. Frew suggested that they get in touch with him as soon as possible so that the video capabilities work effectively. Ruth provided him contact information after the meeting.
The next day is plenaries in the morning but there are two afternoon chunks. 1. view from the field 2. Provenance
Thursday is Lessons from the Past, then Standards and a continuance of Provenance.
There will be a cluster meeting Friday morning. One of the main topics will be Data Identifiers.
On workflows Carol Gobbels was invited but cannot attend. Still looking for other speakers. Frew was suggested as a person to find someone. Bob Downs will be doing a poster on workflow models.
During the discussion on provenance Bruce Barkstrom asked Frew if there has been any work on distributed versions of agents that don’t use scripts? Anything like that in the literature? Frew - In respect to the literature, no. Bruce noted that when using mutli-CPUs this would be useful and that most of the technologies on workflow are graphical systems and that for the majority of the data in satellites it is much more industrial approach rather than adhoc.
Standards Rama isn’t present but he has been making good progress in filling up the standards slot. The only gap is that we don't have anyone to discuss PREMIS yet. Rebecca Guenther can't come without funding. She suggests Nancy Hoebelheinrich who is at least on the right coast. If worst comes to worst, Ruth can give that talk. Ruth thinks it is important as it is the only metadata standard based on the OAIS reference model.
Lessons from the Past Ruth has asked John Moses, Dennis Wingo who has experience rescuing old classified materials, and Tom Ross who is with NOAA's Climate Data Modernization Program. Hopefully everyone will also attend the provenance workshop
View from the Field Nirav Merchant cannot attend, but is working on identifying someone else from iPlant who could attend. Talked with people from the astronomy/space science section. George Djorfski was asked and was happy to attend and speak. Rob Raskin also has others (Steve Hughes?) who will most likely attend.
Bruce reported that NARA doesn’t’ like to present agency positions. Library of Congress got someone from North Carolina University but cannot provide an overview of the national information project. Rebecca Guenther would be the best to come if possible and give a full view of their work. Didn’t quite get what we wanted from that set of invitations.
We also do not have anyone from NSF at this point.
Provenance and Context The rest of the agenda is devoted to this topic but everyone seems to be confirmed and is in place.
Bruce wonders if we need time for open discussion so that we could get the strengths of the group out rather than in formal presentations. Maybe we could spend some time in the first or second day of the provenance, asking participants what they do with data and metadata. What experience? What tools? What is their viewpoint on metadata and preservation? Bruce was not suggesting a broader educational thing but his frustration that there may be too much IT but not enough on the earth science collections in the agenda. For example, because there has been discussions on databases, we are inherently dealing with discrete files. There is a need to recognize the full complexity of the satellite production topologies where you have between 5 and 70 processes, as it creates a particular character to the collections. We have trouble understanding the full range of the scientific arena and the full range of what is going on. There is a GIS community, a modelers community and others. Trying to get the full range from these three tribes is difficult and we need to try and capture it for our discussions on metadata.
Cluster Mission Statement
What should some of our future activities be? What is the function of this group? At this point, member interests seem to include the following:
- Raising the visibility of preservation with the greater community
- Fostering interagency collaboration and coordination
- Moving preservation science forward in the earth science
Technology testbed proposal
The products and services committee submitted a proposal to the federation for funds to develop a testbed for various standards and services. The proposal has been reviewed by the financial committee, but because it was large dollar amount it will also be discussed by the executive committee. Rob's impression is that it was positively reviewed. We should hear whether it is funded by the end of the week.
Ruth noted that a number of the activity areas under that proposal are preservation and stewardship related; most directly the unique object identifiers section and the section on provenance. Everyone should think about how best to take advantage of the funding. This is a chance to try out a variety of standards, etc. using real data.
