Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Scientists in the Community are the most diverse and distributed. While they tend
to be most difficult to assess this is nonetheless an important activity as they may
generate and possess a great deal of information critical to data reuse.
The data archivist is the group or individual who is the current custodian of the
data. The extent to which they have interacted with other stakeholder groups and
extracted knowledge requirement with its associated information will be highly
dependent on the resources available to, and the motivations, background and
personal bias of, the individual archivist.
14.2.2 Archive Evolution and Management
In addition to identifying the stakeholders from the different categories it is also
beneficial to understand how an archive has evolved and been managed. This can
used to illuminate the different uses of data over time and the production of asso-
ciated Representation Information. For example the following kinds of factors have
influenced the use and re-use of data over time:
•
birth and development of a science
•
events which influence data use such as the second world war or global
warming
•
development of countries technologies and the emergence of global networks
•
publication of journals technical manuals, interpretative handbooks, conference
proceeding, minutes of user group meetings, software etc.
•
emergence of branches of science and associated organisations
•
stewardship of data and the influence of different custodians
This is not an exhaustive list as many factors influencing data re-use are domain
specific as is the categorization of the stakeholders. Naturally most of these can
only be expected to be dealt with in the most cursory way in any practical study
nevertheless even this can be extremely important in understanding the situation.
As after this evaluation one should be in position to scope what types of reuse may
be realistically achieved.
As examples, we compare two archives which were examined as part of the
SCARP project, namely the archive of a single site wind profiling instrument based
in Wales and that of a global network of ionosondes which create ionization profiles
of the atmosphere.
The Mesosphere Troposphere Stratosphere (MST) [
177
] data set is extremely
well documented and well managed. Access to the data is restricted, with end users
required to report back on how they have used the data. The Archivist is the key
manager of these data for a number of reasons
•
he is the project scientist involved in production of the data
•
he is a field expert and practising scientist in close contact with relevant scientific
organisations
•
he provides support, runs and keeps records of user group meetings.
