Several Major Reports on Digital Preservation, Curation and Collections

The following has been posted to a discussion list from Clifford Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI):

In the past few days several important reports have been issued; I've collected pointers to them in a single message here.

The U. S. National Science Board has approved the release of the final version (subject to copy-editing) of Chris Greer's report on Long-Lived data collections. Chris gave a talk on this report at the spring CNI meeting, and I circulated a pointer to the earlier version of this report that was issued for comment in March 2005; the version that has just been posted incorporates many of the comments that were received on the draft report.

You can find this document at

http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2005/LLDDC_report.pdf

I would urge anyone at a U.S. research institution or organization concerned with research to take the time to at least look at the executive summary of this very important report.

In addition, the Canadian National Research Council has issued its final report on the 18-month Canadian consultation on access to scientific research data. This is in important, interesting and timely document that serves as a fine complement and counterpoint to the U.S. report just discussed; it is much broader in terms of policy questions but also somewhat more tentative. Again, I would urge anyone interested in scientific or scholarly data curation to at least skim this important report. It can be found at:

http://ncasrd-cnadrs.scitech.gc.ca/home_e.shtml

In the UK, the JISC has announced a new series of awards (totaling some four million pounds) under its repositories program. For information on this, see:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=programme_digital_repositories

and follow the pointers to the descriptions of the individual projects, many of which are of extraordinary interest.

Also in the UK, there has been a very interesting report out of the museum sector reflecting on the problems of collections too extensive to be exhibited:

http://tinyurl.com/ba6dc
or
http://www.museumsassociation.org/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXSESSION_=eUXRKDd1Uo
h&_IXACTION_=summary&%24with+cms_con_core_identifier+is+%229839%22=.&_IXSPFX
_=full/x&_IXFPFX_=full/x&_IXMAXHITS_=1

Note that this page also contains pointers to several interesting ancillary documents, as well as some press material; the report proper is at:

http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/text/ns/policy_collections.pdf

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI