1. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Funded by: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- sa/2.5/scotland/ ; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- sa/2.5/scotland/ Funes the Memorious Issues in long term knowledge retention in engineering Chris Rusbridge

2. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Contents DCC Last year? Funes, and the cobbler Knowledge, engineering, information, longevity Next…

3. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Mission The over-riding purpose of the DCC is to support and promote continuing improvement in the quality of data curation, and of associated digital preservation

4. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Goals Strategic leadership in digital curation Influence and inform policy Provide advocacy and expert advice Provide resources and tools Raise levels of awareness and expertise Strengthen the community Continue links with leading edge research

5. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Status of DCC Phase 2 funded 3/2007 to 2/2010 Associated project DCC SCARP to 4/2009 Includes immersive case study approach including engineering/architecture at Bath Just starting!

6. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Last year at LTKR… Established importance of problem Critical standards exist (STEP, OAIS)… helpful but not sufficient? Identified some issues & limitations Wanted engineering information in (format) registries Identified some archiving problems Listed some requirements

7. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Funes the Memorious Story by Jorge Luis Borges [1] Funes remembers everything 70,000 memories a day… how to classify? Puzzled why the dog at 3:14 (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at 3:15 (seen from the front) I suspect, however, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence.

8. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 The cobbler? Organisation People Knowledge Processes All in one person! Un-scalable, and mortal

9. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Abstraction and domain areas Peak, Lubell, Srinivasan & Waterbury, JCISE 2004 [2]

10. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Scalability: bring on the M names? ILM? Digital curation? No, 3rd party storage management KM? Integrate processes and agents through shared knowledge? With added requirements for long-term? death/autism of KM? Cultural change barriers: knowledge sharing still… Person to person Just in time (if youre lucky) Problem-oriented PLM? Proprietary 3rd party? Trust me… Standards-based…

11. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Whats going on? DesignBuild Maintain during life Retain After life Economic period Product database Compliance period archival Product information repository Continuing interpretability Completeness, accuracy,Completeness, accuracy, versions, process, efficiencyversions, process, efficiency + provenance, longevity

12. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Archive/repository Preserves information (OAIS) For a Designated Community Receives Submission Information Packages (SIPs) Negotiated Data in files Metadata Context & provenance, etc

13. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Designated Community An identified group of potential Consumers who should be able to understand a particular set of information Here: future engineers (and accident investigators!) Will 22nd century engineering concept set & vocabulary be superset of todays? No! Gradual concept drift… But likely discoverable by determined investigator.

14. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Slippery words Polysemantic concepts such as information can be fruitfully analysed only in relation to well-specified contexts of application Floridi [3] Understand Knowledge Knowing that, knowing how Information Factual, instructional, process Data difference that makes a difference Files

15. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Files, databases, packets No naked data In any independent existence the data are always packaged in some way Encoded serialisation of data representing information linked to an information model and/or conceptual schema? Packaging adds extraneous information Confuses the archivist! (Most digital preservation discussions relate to preserving files or at best digital objects)

16. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 ISO 19101 model ISO 19101

17. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Information Standard definition of information Floridi Comprises data that … is well-formed … and meaningful OAIS definition Any type of knowledge that can be exchanged. In an exchange, it is represented by data.

18. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Representation information Heavy load! Representation Information accompanying a digital object, or sequence of bits, is used to provide additional meaning. It typically maps the bits into commonly recognized data types such as character, integer, and real and into groups of these data types. It associates these with higher-level meanings that can have complex inter-relationships that are also described.

19. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Interpreted using… Today: software tools (although OAIS implies RepInfo often a text description…) Tomorrow: Same software running on a VM (emulation)? Different software specially built using the RepInfo? Maybe tool to interpret RepInfo eg in EAST? Maybe new software implementing legacy forms? Maybe transform old data for new software (migration)? Outcomes enhanced if information in widely-used standards-based form!

20. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 OAIS a Reference Model… Not a design Not an architecture There need be no element labeled RepInfo … but the CONCEPT of RepInfo should exist! Ie explicit relationship between data/files and information according to a recorded information model

21. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Engineering RepInfo? Do you have an underlying engineering information model? What would representation information be for engineering information (say encoded in STEP)? Definitions of appropriate STEP elements (eg the standard) Additional refinements added by the tools used +??? What about what cannot be encoded in STEP? Or… what information would an engineer need who had never used STEP or your analysis tools?

22. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 Final questions What else makes your encoded product information fragile? What can you do to make it more robust? What further tools, techniques, training and infrastructures do you need to do a better job?

23. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation Atlantic Workshop on LKTR 2 References [1] Borges, Jorge Luis. (1962) Labyrinths, Selected Stories & Other Writings. Penguin Books [2] Peak, R., Lubell, J., Srinivasan, V., Waterbury, S. (2004). STEP, XML, and UML: Complementary Technologies. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering 4 (4), 379-90STEP, XML, and UML: Complementary Technologies. [3] Floridi, L. (2005). Is Semantic Information Meaningful Data? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LXX, No. 2