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Dear Ina,<br><br>
We're starting to deposit scientific data sets (just ecological data so
far) in our institutional repository. It would be interesting to hear
what other people are doing.<br><br>
We provide researchers with some recommendations on formatting data -
derived from various sources, including (among others):<br>
- Best Practices for Preparing Ecological Data Sets to Share and Archive
(ORNL-DAAC):
<a href="http://www.daac.ornl.gov/PI/bestprac.html">
http://www.daac.ornl.gov/PI/bestprac.html</a><br>
- Ecological data : design, management, and processing. 2000.
Authors:Michener,William K.; Brunt,James W.<br><br>
These include fairly common sense recommendations and apply mostly to
tabular data. We also recommend that researchers save their data to a
format that is more stable for preservation - tab- or comma-delimited
text, for example, rather than an Excel spreadsheet. We haven't
considered recommending XML as a format - I'd be curious if anyone else
has given that any thought.<br><br>
We ALSO encourage researchers to deposit data in a domain repository, if
one exists. If one exists, there may also exist a discipline-specific
metadata standard that more fully describes the data than DSpace metadata
can. In our case we recommend ecologists use EML (Ecological Metadata
Langauge) and deposit the EML record along with the dataset in our DSpace
installation - as well as depositing data and metadata in the KNB
(Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity). See for example
<a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1813/7763" eudora="autourl">
http://hdl.handle.net/1813/7763</a> for a DSpace submission that has an
EML record with it. <br><br>
That's our approach so far - I'd be very interested in hearing what other
people are doing, or reactions to this.<br><br>
Best regards,<br>
Gail<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:45:33
+0200<br>
From: "Ina Smith" <Ina.Smith@up.ac.za><br>
Subject: [Dspace-general] Archiving research data sets<br>
To: dspace-general@mit.edu<br>
Message-ID: <4696226D.1050.00C0.0@up.ac.za><br>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"<br><br>
Good day<br><br>
We would like to start submitting our original research data sets to our
DSpace institutional research repository (i.e. for digital curation
purposes). Have any of you out there tried it, or can you perhaps
recommend best practices in this regard? Examples of how you have
implemented it will also be very helpful.<br><br>
It will be much appreciated! Many thanks in advance.<br><br>
Kind regards,<br>
Ina<br><br>
<br>
Ina Smith <br>
Digital Research Repository (UPSpace) Manager & eApplication
Specialist<br>
Academic Information Service<br>
University of Pretoria<br>
Pretoria<br>
0002<br>
South Africa<br><br>
Tel.: +27 12 420 3082<br>
Fax: +27 12 362 5100<br>
E-mail: ina.smith@up.ac.za <br>
<a href="http://www.ais.up.ac.za/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ais.up.ac.za</a> <br>
</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<br><br>
Gail Steinhart<br>
Research Data & Environmental Sciences Librarian<br>
Albert R. Mann Library<br>
Cornell University<br>
Ithaca, NY 14853<br><br>
Phone: 607-255-7251<br>
Fax: 607-255-0318<br>
E-mail: GSS1@cornell.edu<br>
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