Interagency Data Stewardship/LifeCycle/Preservation Forum/TeleconNotes/20090218

ESIP Federation Data Preservation Cluster Telecon Notes, February 18, 2009

Participants

Ruth Duerr, Xiang Li, Carol Meyer, Karl Benedict, Rama Ramapriyan, Mike Folk, Bruce Wilson, Peter Bajcsy, Rob Raskin, Bob Downs, Chris Lynnes, Doug Zirkle

Welcome and Introductions

Ruth Duerr opened the meeting by welcoming all participants. Introductions ensued with names, organizations and people stating their priorities for the cluster.

Ruth Duerr (NSIDC) – leads a small program at NSIDC on data stewardship (NSF, NASA, NOAA funded), also a data manager at NSIDC. Interested in the data stewardship generally, including all its sub-topics

Karl Benedict (EDAC/UNM) – Director of Earth Data Analysis Center at the University of New Mexico and chairs ESIP’s IT&I Committee. Looking for points of intersection between IT&I Committee and the Cluster.

Rob Raskin (JPL) – Chairs ESIP’s Products and Services Committee which will focus on metadata and inventory issues. His own interests relate to preserving knowledge and data and was the convenor of the interagency data preservation forum held during January’s ESIP Federation meeting. He hopes that the agencies will use this forum to continue a dialogue.

Mike Folk (HDF Group) – Developed HDF format software to help support data preservation. He sees the issue as well beyond their individual software – it’s a community issue. He’s interested in data stewardship generally.

Bob Downs (SEDAC/CIESIN/Columbia University) – Long-term archives manager at SEDAC, archivist and heads up cyberinfrastructure & informatics group. Interested in preserving data so that it can be used in the future by different communities.

Peter Bajcsy (NCSA/University. of Illinois) – ESIP participant and has collaborated with many NASA projects. Is engaged in NSF cyberinfrastructure (hydrology, chemists, environmental & earthquake engineers). His personal research interests relate to preserving documents that go into the National Archives. File formats, conversions, building repositories, sub-setting, scalability and reporting are all of interest.

Xiang Li (University of Alabama) – Involved with semantic technologies and how these might apply to data preservation.

Bruce Wilson (ORNL) – Environmental Services Division at ORNL. His interests are in cross-agency activities, data provenance (‘this data came from that data’), and making data more archive-ready.

Rama Ramapriyan (NASA Goddard EOSDIS) Interested in data preservation generally and the transfer of data to archiving agencies. Has worked in long term archiving issues for about 15 years. Vice Chair of IEEE GRSS Technical Committee on Archiving and Distribution.

Chris Lynnes – (NASA Goddard Chief Systems Engineer Goddard Data & Information Services Center) Interested in the technical side of the data preservation discussion.

Doug Zirkle (CLASS) – CLASS is the enterprise system/IT capabilities for NOAA’s archiving activities. Wants to understand the community’s needs for archiving.

Carol Meyer (ESIP) – here to understand what the Cluster is working on and to support Ruth on today’s call.

Ruth Duerr suggested that everyone join the Cluster’s listserv by going to the ESIP Federation wiki (wiki.esipfed.org) and joining from the Data Preservation Cluster’s page.

ESIP Federation Summer Meeting

Bruce Barkstrom suggested in an email that the Cluster collect from the respective agencies what their philosophies, policies and procedures are for data preservation. This would then lead to the discussion by the ESIP community for how they might support these disparate policies. Besides the agencies represented in the Cluster’s recent activities, the following were mentioned: Library of Congress, NARA, USGS and the DOE.

Chris Lynnes pointed out that NASA travel restrictions might impact NASA personnel’s ability to participate in person for the meeting. It was noted that video conference capabilities will be available to those who will participate remotely.

During the Winter ESIP Federation meeting, it was noted that the digital library community and commercial sector are also working on this topic and a suggestion was made to include them at the summer meeting.

Rama suggested that we have a taxonomy of activities for framing the session (philosophy/policy/procedure, technology, standards/quality).

Bruce Wilson also suggested connecting with Cliff Duke (ESA) who has been working on data preservation activities for his community. This provides a different approach (outside of the agencies). He also noted that we should be exploring what can be learned from other disciplines (e.g. American Chemical Society).

The group discussed a one-day stewardship track covering the taxonomy categories. Ruth Duerr suggested inviting providers such as D-space and Fedora (open-space digital repository groups who are now getting into e-science) or vendors in this space. Chris Lynnes cautioned that vendors are welcome if they’re talking about their technologies (as opposed to making a sales pitch). Carol Meyer pointed out that the meeting planning team is discussing putting together a technology showcase for the meeting.

Themes for Data Stewardship Track:

• Agency Philosophy/Policies/Procedures – co-leads: Bruce Barkstrom & Ruth Duerr
• Standards – lead: Rama Ramapriyan
• Technology – Ruth Duerr will speak to the dspace/Fedora, SDSC (secondarily Karl Benedict, Bruce Wilson (CDL) and Jim Frew (Alexandria)
• Societies & Other disciplines - Bruce Wilson to assess potential for a session on this topic

The points of contact will write up a brief overview for what might be presented in each theme during the summer meeting. Ideally, these would be sent to Ruth by the end of February.

Raising the Visibility of Data Preservation as an Issue to the Broader Community

Where should engagement take place:

• Session at AGU, perhaps? – The group agreed that this was a good idea. Is it ESSI or Union session? Chris Lynnes suggested seeking Peter Fox’s help in crafting the submission.
• AGU Town hall meeting? The question would be how to ensure interest by the science community - this would need a very carefully crafted description

Cluster Wiki

http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Preservation_and_Stewardship

The wiki is available for the Cluster to use. Cluster participants are encouraged to populate the wiki with relevant content. Anyone can register for a wiki account and then can post/edit content.

Future Meetings

The Cluster decided to meet on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 1 pm MST.