The document discusses the future of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and its role as a center of expertise in data curation and preservation. It outlines the DCC's proposed core services for the next phase, including providing reference resources, training, expertise/consultancy, community building, and tools/toolkits. It also discusses potential additional services and ensuring the DCC complements rather than conflicts with the UK Research Data Service.

1. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation
The future of the DCC
Chris Rusbridge
E-Science Workshop April 2009
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2. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation
Contents
• Curation & integrated science
• Poetry & Philosophy of D H Rumsfeld
• Designated Community & Knowledge Base
• DCC services
• Future of the DCC
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Curation
• Wikipedia
• Curator: a content specialist responsible for an institution's
collections and, together with a publications specialist, their
associated collections catalogs.
• Digital Curation: the curation, preservation, maintenance,
collection and archiving of digital assets
• Sheer curation: an approach to digital curation where
curation activities are quietly integrated into the normal work
flow of those creating and managing data and other digital
assets.
• DCC: Digital curation is maintaining and adding value
to a trusted body of digital information for current and
future use.
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4. a centre of expertise in data curation and preservation
Integrated Science
• The application of multiple scientific
disciplines to one or more core scientific
challenges
• Examples of integrated sciences?
• Archaeology
• Environmental sciences
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Integrated Science implications
• Scientists will be using unfamiliar data,
therefore
• Data curators and managers must make their
data available for unfamiliar users!
• And now for something unfamiliar?
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Poetry & Philosophy of D H
Rumsfeld
Hart Seely, April 2, 2003,
SLATE http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/
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A Confession
‘Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.’
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
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Clarity
‘I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
‘And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.’
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
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The Unknown
‘As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.’
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
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The 4th Rumsfeld?
• 3 epistemological classes (???)
• Known knowns
• Known unknowns
• Unknown unknowns
• 4th class?
• Uknown knowns?
• Critical issue for cross-disciplinary sciences
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Some OAIS Concepts?
• Knowledge Base: allows a consumer to understand
something
• Designated Community: the set of consumers for
whom the archive curates something
• Representation Information: helps you interpret a
data object yielding an information object
• The amount and nature of RepInfo required is dependent on
the Knowledge Base of the Designated Community
• If you curate for project colleagues in the short term, little if
any RepInfo required
• If you curate for those unfamiliar with the data, more RepInfo
is needed
• (All broadly interpreted!) ••CCSDS (2002). Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS).
Retrieved. from http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf.
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Time
• KB is f1(DC, t)
• DC is f2(t)
• RepInfo needed is f3(f1(DC, t), f2(t))
• (but none of these concepts can be precisely defined!)
• If DC is small and t is short (months to year or so),
then both may be ignored, and RepInfo be assumed
part of the KB
• If DC is extensive (eg cross-discipline) and t is long (5
years to 25 plus), then RepInfo must be articulated
• If t is very long, most bets are off (post-hoc
reconstruction likely to be needed)
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What might RepInfo include
• Structure information: file format definitions, etc
• Semantic information: data dictionaries, code books etc
• Robust methods (working code?)
• Not to mention many kinds of metadata, provenance,
documentation of hidden assumptions, etc
• Cross-domain schemas one approach to articulating
RepInfo?
• (Never perfect, of course)
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What about Rumsfeld 4?
• Biggest concern with unfamiliar user is
clashing concepts, eg different baselines,
units, geographies, granularity
• Especially where terms are ambiguous or
differently interpreted
• The KBs of two DCs conflict, potentially silently
• Happens all the time, of course
• The unspoken: tacit knowledge, unknown
knowns!
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Timing
• Curation starts before creation
• Before project proposal!
• Data acquisition should not happen at the end
• Continuous acquisition much better?
• Enforcement… or credit for data?
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Other curation issues of concern
• Sustainability (work on your survival)
• Succession (what happens to your data if you don’t)
• Data audit (know what you’ve got)
• Data risk assessment (assess your chances of loss)
• Repository external audit???
• Provenance & computational lineage
• Archiving database changes
• Community proxy roles: help your communities
develop data standards & data practices
• DCC has tools & support for some of these…
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… and Research Outputs?
• Need more semantically aware texts to
support cross-community understanding
• Coded up (cf microformats, RDFa)
• People
• Citations & references
• Science features (eg chemicals, reactions)
• Graphs, spectra, tables linking to
• Supplementary data
• PDF is pretty bad at this
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DCC Phase 3
• Post January 2010?
• Smaller (2/3 budget if we’re lucky)
• Joint planning with JISC
• More tightly managed (hub and spoke)
• No development (says JISC)
• Core services plus optional additional services
• 1st draft seen by JSR
• Evaluation reported to JISC
• Feedback session next week
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Proposed core services
• Reference Resources and Exemplars
• Training and Staff Development
• Expertise, Advice, Consultancy and Hands-on
Support
• Community-building and Information-sharing
activities
• Data Management and Sharing Plans
• Policy and Strategic Development
• Providing Access to Tools and Toolkits
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Possible additional services
• Development of Tools, Toolkits, Wizards and
Templates
• Infrastructure Services
• Model licences for data
• Data citation guidelines
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Relationship to UKRDS?
• Overlap of territory
• Aiming for complementarity rather than
conflict
• DCC becomes core part of UKRDS
• Some issues about the vision, though
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What do you want from the DCC?
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