1. Liz Lyon Associate Director, Outreach Chris Rusbridge, DCC Director
Digital Curation Centre
a centre of support for data curation and preservation
UK Digital Curation Centre One Year On
Liz Lyon Associate Director, Outreach
Chris Rusbridge, DCC Director

2. Overview What are the challenges that the DCC faces?
Why is digital curation important?
What are the challenges that the DCC faces?
About the people and our collaborative approach
Addressing the issues
How can you contribute to the DCC?

3. Curation?
“maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for current and future use”

4. Digital curation continuum
For later use? In use now (and the future)?
Static
Dynamic
Data preservation
Data curation

5. Assuring permanent access to the records of science & the humanities?
Long term access to primary data
Increasing data volumes from eScience and Grid-enabled / cyberinfrastructure applications
Changing research paradigm: data-driven science, “big science”
Observational data, simulations, large-scale experimentation
Multi-media resources, statistical data, surveys, geo-spatial data……

7. Facilitate “post-processing” and knowledge extraction
Enable the acquisition of newly-derived information and knowledge
Run complex algorithms over primary datasets
Mining (data, text, structures)
Modelling (economic, climate, mathematical, biological)
Analysis (statistical, lexical, pattern matching, gene)
Presentation (visualisation, rendering)

9. Provide additional functionality beyond digital preservation processes
Annotations
Gene and protein sequences
e-Lab books (Smart Tea Project in chemistry)

10. Emerging policy on open access to data
Presentation services: subject, media-specific, data, commercial portals
Searching , harvesting, embedding
Resource discovery, linking, embedding
Data creation / capture / gathering: laboratory experiments, Grids, fieldwork, surveys, media
The scholarly knowledge cycle : linking research data to publications eBank UK Project
Data analysis, transformation, mining, modelling
Aggregator services: national, commercial
Harvestingmetadata
Research & e-Science workflows
Repositories : institutional, e-prints, subject, data, learning objects
Deposit / self-archiving
Validation
Validation
Publication
Linking
Emerging policy on open access to data
Data curation: databases & databanks
Peer-reviewed publications: journals, conference proceedings

11. DCC people (some of them…)
Management & Co-ordination
Director Chris Rusbridge (University of Edinburgh)
Community Support & Outreach
Led by Dr Liz Lyon (UKOLN, University of Bath)
Service Definition & Delivery
Led by Professor Seamus Ross (HATII [ERPANET], University of Glasgow)
Development
Led by Dr David Giaretta (Astronomical Software & Services, CCLRC)
Research
Led by Professor Peter Buneman (Informatics, University of Edinburgh)

12. The challenges we face Standards
Interoperability issues: technical & hopefully soluble
Scale
Volume and diversity of datasets
Culture
Bringing communities together
Library/information science/archives “document tradition”
Domain research (chemists, astronomers, biologists)
Computer science (databases)
Commercial suppliers (storage technology)

13. More challenges…… Process
Highly-distributed organisation: use collaborative tools
Skills
Distributed amongst the 4 partners & beyond
Engagement
Lots of existing work and many significant players
Impact
Visible & measurable, in the short & long-term
Meeting expectations (which are high…..)
Of the community and our funders

14. User requirements analysis
Commissioned study
Leona Carpenter
Reporting now
Desk-based research
Focus groups
Interviews
Results will inform research, development service definition / delivery and outreach
Recommendations and priority tasks

15. Some sound bytes…
R&D issues: Annotation services, Ontology development, Automating metadata creation, Tools and toolkits, Data Format Description Language, Identifiers, Registries, Economic and cost-benefits studies
Advisory services :“Ask-a-Curator”,FAQs, reports, briefings, awareness-raising materials, best practice guidance, Storage media, “Like Erpanet”, advise Government, Research Councils, funding bodies
Professional development: Short courses, conferences, seminars, workshops, secondments to DCC and to working repository services
Outreach: Leadership for the future, case studies, sharing solutions, collaboration with other partners, international peers, industry links
Taxonomy of “Users”

16. Outline Taxonomy of digital curation users by role
4. Policy makers
funding bodies
other leaders
2. Data Curators
1. Data Creators
3. Data Re-users

17. Outline Taxonomy of digital curation users by role
Data Preservers
4. Policy makers
funding bodies
other leaders
2. Data Curators
Data publishers
1. Data Creators
3. Data Re-users

18. Outline Taxonomy by significant function of organisational entity
Research
4. Funders
3. Learning & teaching
5. Policy / strategy makers
2. Service provision
“Designated communities”

19. Outline Taxonomy by significant function of organisational entity
Research
4. Funders
3. Learning & teaching
5. Policy / strategy makers
2. Service provision
Commercial
“Designated communities”

20. Service definition & delivery
Advisory services
Responses to queries—from legal to technical guidance
Site visits (National Institute of Environmental eScience)
Information Services
Briefing Documents - Freedom of Information by Mags McGinley
DIGITAL CURATION MANUAL
20 chapters written by community experts e.g. Metadata written by Michael Day, UKOLN
Peer-reviewed
Checklist for Compliance with best practices and standards
Technology Watch

21. Services: workshops 2005 Programme
Preservation of medical databases: May at the Gulbenkian Institute, Lisbon in collaboration with ERPANET & the Wellcome Trust
Institutional repositories: 6 July at the University of Cambridge, UK in collaboration with DSpace
Cost models in collaboration with the Digital Preservation Coalition July at British Library
Persistent identifiers liaising with NISO, summer, UK location tbc

22. Development approach
OAIS (Open Archival Information System) linkage: focus on representation information
link to global work on format registries?
Concentrate on scientific data formats?
Repository
Representation Information
Standards and Tools
Aim for OAIS compliance
Persistent identifiers
Certification… RLG task force
Open development wiki and list

23. OAIS Reference Model – Functional Model
How relevant to curation?

24. Representation Net

25. Representation Information More detail
How does this relate to format registries?

26. High Level View
Example of use of Representation Information Labelling

27. Registry issues? Trusted repository of Representation Information
Authenticity of information
Access control
Certificates/Digests : (are they trustable over the long term?)
Findability
Persistent IDs
What can we rely on?
Labels (to support automated processing)
Extensibility
Distributed

28. Registry development Simple PHP prototype Scoping study- unification
Formats, standards, tools
More robust prototype in development
Based on ebXML & JAXR
Potentially distributed, cooperative maintenance model

29. Development Roadmap
Registry: complete prototype, link to PRONOM, GDFR etc, handover to service
Representation information: describe CCLRC (science) data using EAST, etc
Certification work continues
Additional tools: metadata extraction
Testbeds, interactions with others

30. Research approaches Publishing & integrating scientific databases
‘Archiving’ past states of volatile databases
Database provenance and annotation
Organisational dynamics of trusted repositories
Automating metadata extraction
Cost-benefit analysis of data curation
Rights and responsibilities

31. The database picture Source data
Curated data: classified, cleaned, annotated, integrated, cross-linked
Source data

32. Curated Databases are Central
Much/most scientific data is now in databases
They often do not contain source experimental data. Sometimes just annotation/metadata
They borrow extensively from, and refer to, other databases
You are now judged by your data as well as your (paper) publications!!
These databases are built and maintained with a great deal of human or computational effort.
What makes a database?
it has internal structure or it changes.
Size alone doesn’t qualify

33. Archiving (preserving) volatile databases
How do you preserve something that changes every hour or minute?
Important for the scientific record – someone might have cited your data at time t.
Current practice
Create versions (how often?)
Log changes
Use diffs
Do nothing (common!)

34. Curated databases – some issues
Integrating and publishing data so that someone else can use it.
Annotating existing data and moving annotations to other databases
Provenance: where did this data come from?
Archiving: how do you preserve something that is constantly changing?

35. How do we cite data?
A URL or citation to an article is already unsatisfactory.
DCC client complaint: “I spend a lot of time searching [electronic documents] for the part that is relevant to the citation.”
The problem is much worse when you are citing something in a very large database.
How do you use a citation to locate data?
How do you ensure that the citation persists?
Connections with DB archiving and DOIs

36. Research approaches Publishing & integrating scientific databases
‘Archiving’ past states of volatile databases
Database provenance and annotation
Organisational dynamics of trusted repositories
Automating metadata extraction
Cost-benefit analysis of data curation
Rights and responsibilities
“Public domain, public interest, public funding” paper Waelde & McGinley

38.
Launch planned June/July
Peer-reviewed contributions
Peter Buneman Editor (research)
Production editor Philip Hunter

39. Sample issue
Full papers
Invited articles
News & views
Papers for submission are very welcome!

40. 1st DCC International Conference
Location - Bath UK
29-30 September 2005
Keynote speakers
Cliff Lynch CNI
Graham Cameron European Bio-informatics Institute
DCC Research update
Social highlights

41. Associates Network Goals
Develop understanding, share best practice, advance research, promote recognition, develop consensus
Membership
International groups, national bodies, industry partners, funders, research groups, HEIs, FEIs, individuals……
Benefits
Early access to R&D outputs, advisory services, training, input to definition and design, community participation
Discussion Forum Please join us!

42. Research Councils HEIs & FE Institutes International Collaborations
CMS-Bristol
NIEeS RG
BADC
BODC
ESO
IVOA
EDG
GridPP
EGEE
Cambridge
Leicester
Jodrell Bank
DPC
MIMAS
ILRT
Council for
Museums, Archives
& Libraries
RDN. OCLC
So’ton
OAI
NOF
NLA
UNC
ESA
NASA
NARA
CNES
RLG
BNSC
SDSC
NEODC
CEH RI
NCS
RLG
Research
Councils
HEIs
& FE
Institutes
International
Collaborations
Standards
Bodies
CCLRC
UKOLN
Durham
WT-CFG
Leicester IC
Maastricht
Oxford
DELOS
AHDS
Microsoft
IBM
Oracle BT
STK
DPC
DLI (US)
NeSC
UofE
UofG
Innogen
NHS
Capri
Dutch NA
Swiss NA
Urbino
UNC
Salzburg
IBM
Almaden
JHU
CSIRO
Caltech
CDS
ESO
OCLC
NTUA
INRIA
HUJ
UPC
Max-
Planck
MIMAS
IASSIST
LDC
ACM
Data
Archive
TU Vienna
UPenn
EBI
MRC HGU
Kyoto
USC
INRIA
GSK
Roslin

43. Slides from Peter Buneman, David Giaretta and others used with thanks.
Acknowledgements
Slides from Peter Buneman, David Giaretta and others used with thanks.

44. How you can help us How does OAIS relate to curation?
How do format registries relate to representation information?
Who else is working across these areas?
What outcomes would you like to see?