Data Management Course Outline

Back to the main data management training page

NOTE: We agreed that the target audience initially would be scientists

Module template and Author Guidelines

• Data management training module template (ppt)
• Author Guidelines

For Scientists

The case for data stewardship

• Agency requirements - Ruth
  • NSF data management plans - Ruth
  • NASA science data policy - Ron Weaver
  • NOAA Administrative Order 212-15, Management of Environmental and Geospatial Data and Information - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
• Return on Investment - Erin/Carol
  • Return on Scientist's investment - Erin/Carol
  • Expanding the audience for your data- Erin/Carol
  • Return on public investments- Erin/Carol
• Verifiable science
  • Tying your data to standards, metrics, and benchmarks
• Facilitating science through interoperable discovery and access - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
• Enhancing your reputation - Matt Mayernik/NCAR
• Preserving the Scientific Record - Matt
  • Establishing Relationships with archives - Matt
  • Preserving a Record of Environmental Change - Matt
  • Other case studies? - Matt
• What Not to do when Archiving Data!

Data Management plans

• Why do a data management plan?
• Elements of a plan - Ruth
  • Identify materials to be created - Ruth
  • Identify your audience(s) - Ruth
  • Data organization - Ruth
  • Roles and responsibilities - Ruth
  • Describing and documenting your data, including metadata - Ruth
  • Standards used - Ruth
  • Data access, sharing, and re-use policies - Ruth
  • Backups, archives, and preservation strategy - Ruth
  • ??QUESTION: Should the plan define (an) objective metric(s) to make implementation and compliance measurable?
• Estimating effort and resources required - Ruth
  • Hardware, software capabilities required - Ruth
  • Personnel resources and skills needed - Ruth
• Some available resources to help with developing your plan - Ruth

Local Data Management

• Managing your data - Ruth
  • Data identifiers and locators - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • File naming conventions (Cook)
  • Backing up your data (Cook)
  • Write it down! Maintaining contemporaneous documentation
    • Who, what, when, where, why, how
    • Tracking and describing changes to the data
  • QUESTIONS
    • Should we at least touch on version control, or is that adequately addressed by tracking/describing changes?
• Data Formats - Ruth
  • Building understandable spreadsheets - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • Using self-describing data formats - Curt Tilmes
  • Choosing and adopting community accepted standards
  • Avoiding proprietary formats
• Creating documentation and metadata
  • Developing a citation for your data (Cook)
  • Recording provenance and context - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • For your collections as a whole
  • Creating item level metadata
  • Metadata for discovery - Tyler Stevens/GCMD
  • Metadata for access and use - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • Metadata for archiving - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • Metadata for tracking data processing - Curt Tilmes
  • Individual agencies, archives and registries may have specific requirements
• Working with your archive organization - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
  • Planning for longer term preservation - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • Work with your archive early and often - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
  • Broadening your user community
• Advertising your data
  • Agency/institution requirements for publishing metadata
  • Journals and publications
  • Agency/institution web sites
  • Using portals and registries
    • Publishing metadata to a Web Accessible Folder
    • Publishing metadata to GCMD - Tyler Stevens/GCMD
    • Publishing metadata to ECHO
    • Publishing metadata to Data.Gov
    • NOTE: Need to address additional portals and registries beyond GCMD & ECHO. Add other entries as appropriate
  • Datacasting
• Providing access to your data - Rama/Bob Downs/Chris Lenhardt/Ron Weaver (whole section)
  • Evaluating who your audience is
  • Who gets to access your data
    • Agency best practices & policies
  • Access mechanisms
  • Tracking data usage
  • Handling sensitive data
  • Rights

Preservation strategies

• Sponsor (e.g., Agency) or institution requirements - Ron Weaver /NSIDC
• Options for archiving your data - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
  • What archives are out there? - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
    • Discipline or institutional archives
    • Finding an archive
  • What to do if there is no archive out there - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
• What data goes into a Long-term archive? - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
• What do long term archives do with my data? - Jeff Arnfield/NCDC
• Data transfer & submission agreements - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
  • See "Submission Agreements" section under "For Data Managers"
  • Agency/archive specific requirements my vary
• Intro to the OAIS Reference Model - Curt Tilmes
• Emerging standards for preservation - Ron Weaver/NSIDC
• Metadata

Responsible Data Use

• Citation and credit - Matt Mayernik/NCAR
• Data restrictions - Bob Downs
• Fair use - Matt
• Feedback and metrics
• Collaboration
• Community participation

For Data Managers

• Data Management plan support
• Collection or acquisition policies
• Intro to OAIS reference model
• Initial Assessment and appraisal
  • Identify information to be preserved
    • main features and properties
    • dependencies on information here or elsewhere
  • Identify objects to be received
  • Establish complementary information needs (e.g., format, data descriptions, provenance, reference information, context, fixity information)
    • What complementary information is needed for data useful for climate studies (USGCRP list)
  • Assessing potential designated communities
  • Assessing probable curation duration
  • Assessing data transfer options
  • Defining access paths
  • Assessing costs and feasibility
  • Metadata, metadata standards, and levels of metadata
• Submission agreements
  • Data integrity
  • Contacts
  • Schedule
  • Operational Procedures
  • Error reconciliation
  • Constraints
  • other aspects necessary for understanding how to support the data
• Preparing for ingest
• Ingesting data
  • Validation checks
  • Identifiers
  • Citations
  • Levels of service
• Periodic re-assessment
• Curation activities
  • Media migration
  • Format migration