Interagency Data Stewardship/LifeCycle/Jul2009MeetingPlans

Please contribute your thoughts and suggestions on our upcoming plans for including Cluster Activities at the upcoming summer ESIP meeting (Santa Barbara, July 2009).

This page was completely reworked on March 11, 2009 - Please review the history if you need access to prior versions.

Current plans call for a session during the technology showcase on Day 1, two separate sessions early the next day, followed by a whole day spread over two days devoted to a provenance/context workshop. Session descriptions, goals, outcomes, and potential speakers follow:

• Preservation technologies to be given during Day 1 (~2 hours)
  • The intent of this session is to determine and begin to assess preservation technologies that exist in the market place (both commercial and open source)
  • There would be presentations on technologies like Fedora, DSpace, DuraSpace, IRods, NCore, LOCKSS, as well as a variety of workflow related technologies, etc.
  • Topics each speaker should cover:
    • Purpose of the technology (what aspects of data lifecycle does the technology support)
    • Capabilities
    • Known Limitations
    • Special emphasis given to discussion of how provenance/context is handled
  • Suggested speakers

• Standards - this session should be held prior to the start of the Provenance workshop (~2 hours)
  • Presentations would be given on the following topics
    • Preservation standards
      • OAIS - Have someone knowledgeable about OAIS to explain what it is, how it is being used by NOAA and other agencies. (Why is it important to use it? Is it a mandatory for agencies to use? If so, who made it mandatory?)
    • Data formats - Discuss what is important in data formats to ensure long term preservation of data – talk about HDF, HDF-EOS and NetCDF in this context. What about agencies other than NASA and NOAA? What formats do they use? How does one ensure that data stored in HDF/HDF-EOS/NetCDF continue to be readable and understandable 50 years from now? Etc.
    • Metadata formats – treat similarly to data formats considering metadata standards currently in use (ISO standards, North American Profile, CF-1, COARDS, PREMIS).
  • The purpose of this session is both standards training and to raise awareness within the community of the standards that exist in the earth science. It is also to determine where additional standards work is needed, where agency collaboration can help move things forward, etc.
  • Suggested speakers:
    • Mike Folk on HDF efforts to improve data preservation

• The View from the Field (~2 hours)
  • What are other disciplines doing for preservation/stewardship? How do they deal with databases, collections of files, physical objects, ad-hoc services such as work flows? How do they deal with provenance? Any lessons to be learned and incorporated into earth science practice?
  • Biology, Astronomy, Medicine, etc. are potential disciplines to be covered
  • Suggested speakers:
    • Clifford Duke - Ecological Society of America

• The bulk of the time would be spent on a Provenance/Context Workshop (roughly 8 hours spread over 2 days) with agenda:
  • Introduction - Purpose of the workshop, overview of agenda, process
  • Other agencies - should this be inside or outside the workshop?
    • The session would start with presentations by representatives from the Library of Congress, NARA, and NSF. NARA and LOC would be asked to cover:
      • What are they doing in regards to earth science data?
      • What programs do they have moving preservation practice forward? Status and results.
      • What standards they use and promulate?
      • What do they do for provenance and records tracking?
      • How do they deal with harmonization issues (i.e. with heterogenous standards, policies, and practices)?
    • NSF would be asked to cover:
      • A description of the NSF program, status, and results
    • Speaker suggestions:
      • Bob Chadduck - NARA
      • Laura Campbell - LOC
  • Prior work
    • OAIS descriptions of provenance/context
    • Hunolt document
  • Provenance research
    • Briefings on some of the research in this area
    • Speaker suggestions:
      • Jim Frew
      • Bruce Barkstrom
      • Ruth Duerr - creation of archive packages
  • Develop requirements, guidelines, best practices for provenance/context information and standards in the earth sciences