Interagency Data Stewardship/LifeCycle/Preservation Forum/TeleconNotes/20090909

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

Data Preservation – September 9, 2009

Attending

  • Ruth Duerr
  • Brian Rogan
  • Bruce Wilson
  • Bob Downs
  • Bruce Barkstrom
  • H. K. Ramapriyan (Rama)
  • Nancy Hoebelheinrich
  • Curt Tilmes
  • Rob Raskin

Review of upcoming activities at the fall AGU

As a reminder, we submitted a session to AGU and have invited speakers from NASA, NOAA, USGS and UK. We have a grand total of 16 Abstracts. Both of the NSF DataNet projects that have been funded submitted abstracts.

In addition, we've agreed to collaborate with Bernard Minster's AGU data committee on holding a town hall at AGU on the subject of citations for data.

Identifiers TestBed Status

There has been one telecom at this point. We have identified the datasets we want to test and we have also started to select the technologies we want to test with. The federation website computer will support the activities - it is now Drupal and mySQL based. The programmer to support all of the test bed activities has been hired. There is an identifiers paper in the works where we identified the technologies that were applicable. The identifier schemes tend to form families of similar types - which generally satisfy different requirements. As a result, the testbed will only use a few schemes - roughly 1 or so of each type. We are just starting up the testbed and it will be a one year activity.

Nancy noted that ARKs might be useful (or their most recent spinoff WARK (sp?)).

Ruth noted that the group had identified at least four identifier schemes that will be tested. Bruce noted that it was important to get something besides digits and periods that were used by DOIs.

Bruce Barkstrom isn’t sure what a Dataset is. He is looking for a definition but he has found a large variety of definitions from a number of organizations.

There was a discussion of the semantics of terminology particularly regarding Datasets.

Workshop

Ruth created a series of google docs for the Provenance and Context Workshop Report and she noticed that one person has added material but not very many more additions. She suggested that deadlines be set: EDSWG is in late in October for a complete draft document and AGU is December for the final version. There were no objections to the deadlines.

GEO Data Sharing Principles proposal

ESIP has observer status with GEO. Should we respond to the proposal? Do we need more information on GEO?

GEO/GEOSS is a very international organization. It takes a lot of negotiation to get agreement on anything.

Do we think we should respond to the proposal?

  • It is important because it will raise GEO’s awareness that ESIP is an active player.
  • If the ESIP federation is interested in taking a more active role, it is worth commenting on.
  • Carol has actively been trying to get groups to respond to GEO proposals.
  • It would be best if ESIP could have a united response to GEO.
  • GEO has identified 9 societal benefit areas. They tend to look at what kinds of observations are helpful. They are also tied in to the US global change research programs which has a similar list of benefit areas.
  • GEO is probably more active than the US program.

After discussion (see list above) the group agreed that ESIP should respond to GEO. The next question was how to respond. There was discussion of how to achieve an ESIP (rather than a Preservation and Stewardship cluster) response. One way to have an ESIP response is to pass around our cluster’s work to the other groups. It sounds like perhaps Carol will take care of that.

Bruce Barkstrom distributed a draft response. Have people had a chance to read Bruce’s response?

Is it worth discussing it or should we spend more time reviewing it? They do need a response by the middle of October.

Ruth suggested that we get together via email on Bruce’s response to put together a group response and then leave it to Carol to correlate with the organization as a whole.

Winter Meeting Planning

Rob Raskin suggested that we have a devoted track at the winter meeting to finish what was begun at the summer meeting.

Ruth noted that we might actually be able to have a testbed demo. Rob - Noted that there will be a general testbed activities demo anyway at the meeting so it could be part of that.

Potential topics for winter meeting include: - Identifiers testbed - Report from summer workshop - Briefing on AGU activiteis - Developing future plans in this area - Other technologies to demo or have briefings on?

Other discussion

Bruce Barkstrom mentioned that Carol will be talking with the excom to get an idea of how the federation may deal with copyright issue. There are three areas of discussion

  1. software
  2. documentation that is needed for the software
  3. other kinds of writing we may do

What is the legal state of the federation in terms of legal action by someone who might have proprietary interest? A discussion ensued about the issues around copyright.

This topic will be discussed further at the next telecom. Please check out Bruce’s document and be sure to work on your sections.

Meeting adjourned at 3:46 PM