Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A common framework for at least collecting the information would be useful if a
good understanding of the important parameters is to be gained.
The Blue Ribbon Task Force report provides a number of important consider-
ations including the important idea of buying future options. Here funders put off
making a long term commitment, instead funding preservation for a sufficient time
that allows future decision makers to be in a position to make that decision.
Another issue concerns the incentives for data producers to make their data avail-
able; for example funders could require, perhaps by making part of the funding
depend upon it, that steps are taken by researchers that their research outputs are
make available for preservation.
There are a number of resource generating value-added services which can be
associated with digital preservation. These include services such as Portico (
http://
www.portico.org/digital-preservation/
) used by some libraries for an outsourced
preservation service. However funding for such services derives from the usual
sources - national research funders, EU or research organisations. New sources of
funding may come from advertising revenue where there is wide public interest in
the data, for example images of the Earth or the sky.
24.3 Possible Organisational and Social Infrastructure Concepts
and Components
It is clear that a number of the infrastructure components described in the previ-
ous sections are themselves archives which need to preserve digital information
over the long term and which therefore themselves require the support of that
very preservation infrastructure. For example, the threat of The current custodian
of the data, whether an organisation or project, may cease to exist at some point
in the future should be taken into account by securing the handover to another
host organisation. Also, Persistent Identifiers must support such a move and resolve
correctly.
An initial organisational setup could be supported by a government-level organ-
isation, for example a component of the EU, although commitment to provide a
service for an indefinite time tends not to be popular. An alternative approach is to
move the responsibility to an arms-length or consortium-based organisational struc-
ture, such as the Alliance for Permanent Access. This structure is bringing together
key stakeholders in many sectors and may play a key role. Even this may need to be
underpinned by governmental guarantee in order to provide real confidence in the
infrastructure's longevity.
Aside from the organisational component, social/behavioural aspects must be
considered. For example, a science data research infrastructure must facilitate data
sharing and data mining. However researchers do have concerns about this; indeed,
it has been (jokingly) said that data sharing/mining means either “
this data
is
mine
