[Dspace-general] Archiving research data sets

[Gail Steinhart]

Dear Ina,

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.

We provide researchers with some recommendations on formatting data - 
derived from various sources, including (among others):
- Best Practices for Preparing Ecological Data Sets to Share and 
Archive (ORNL-DAAC): 
<http://www.daac.ornl.gov/PI/bestprac.html>http://www.daac.ornl.gov/PI/bestprac.html
- Ecological data : design, management, and processing. 
2000.  Authors:Michener,William K.; Brunt,James W.

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.

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 http://hdl.handle.net/1813/7763 for a 
DSpace submission that has an EML record with it.

That's our approach so far - I'd be very interested in hearing what 
other people are doing, or reactions to this.

Best regards,
Gail

>Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:45:33 +0200
>From: "Ina Smith" <Ina.Smith at up.ac.za>
>Subject: [Dspace-general] Archiving research data sets
>To: dspace-general at mit.edu
>Message-ID: <4696226D.1050.00C0.0 at up.ac.za>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15"
>
>Good day
>
>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.
>
>It will be much appreciated! Many thanks in advance.
>
>Kind regards,
>Ina
>
>
>Ina Smith
>Digital Research Repository (UPSpace) Manager & eApplication Specialist
>Academic Information Service
>University of Pretoria
>Pretoria
>0002
>South Africa
>
>Tel.: +27 12 420 3082
>Fax: +27 12 362 5100
>E-mail: ina.smith at up.ac.za
>http://www.ais.up.ac.za



Gail Steinhart
Research Data & Environmental Sciences Librarian
Albert R. Mann Library
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Phone: 607-255-7251
Fax: 607-255-0318
E-mail: GSS1 at cornell.edu
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