JISC

Launching the new HE area of its educ @ guardian section, the Guardian yesterday explored the issue of digital curation and in particular the work of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC). Funded by JISC and the e-Science core programme and hosted by the University of Edinburgh, the centre was launched last year to support the curation and preservation of digital data created by research communities in the UK. 

In the article, journalist Julie Nightingale highlights some of the challenges facing these communities as they seek to store, manage and make available the fruits of their research projects: “For a researcher, ploughing through the volume of information isn't the only issue. Pinpointing the significant findings of others that will inform your own work is made more challenging when the data set you're pursuing is poorly labelled, stored in haphazard fashion, missing the back-up info that would verify its authenticity and accuracy or interred in an out-of-date software format.” 

The DCC was set up, says Nightingale, to help institutions overcome these and other challenges. Speaking to the Guardian, director of the DCC Chris Rusbridge, says: “… in a sense, it is simply a question of good housekeeping but it is housekeeping that has to last 50 years or more. You may have to keep notes in association with the data for long periods and you don't know what environmental changes may occur that might affect the data. How many pictures do we all have in our photo albums that we simply don't recognise because no one wrote who, what and where on the back?" 

Looking at one example of an organisation being supported by the DCC, the British Atmospheric Data Centre, the article points to the enormous amounts of data currently being produced by the BADC: “The centre currently stores around 120 terabytes of atmospheric and meteorological information gathered by aircraft instruments or satellites, among others, and including data used by the Met Office for its weather forecasts.” 

But such amounts are small compared to the amounts which will soon be produced and need to be managed. As Rusbridge says: "Technology is advancing at a great rate and new capabilities come in that bring in new kinds of challenges. A few years ago it was impossible to imagine that we'd be working with petabytes of data but scientists are unstoppable." 

To look at the article please go to: Guardian article