A LOOMING CRISIS: MAINTAINING ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC RESEARCH PRODUCTS

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A LOOMING CRISIS MAINTAINING ACCESS TO
ELECTRONIC RESEARCH PRODUCTS

• Daphne Fautin
• University of Kansas
• Gail Kampmeier
• Illinois Natural History Survey

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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences and other molecular data
• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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What Happens

• When project funding ceases
• When project members disperse
• When PIs retire, change research topics, move, or
  

Who will champion access to the electronic
resources produced by PEETs, AToLs, BSIs, PBIs, ?
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Fate of Our Electronic Resources

• Who should be responsible?
• Institutions originally receiving project
  funding?
• Funding agencies?
• Those creating the resources?
• Professional societies?

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Issues

• Who owns the products? (not an issue only for
  electronic media)
• How can the products continue to be served?
• How should the products best be preserved?

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This is a global issue

• Among efforts to grapple with it is the 2005
  National Science Board Report 05-40

www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsb0540
(NPR this morning on electronic art and art
museums)
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Issues

• Who owns the products? (not an issue only for
  electronic media)
• How can the products continue to be served?
• How should the products best be preserved?

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Archiving

• LIBRARIES have historically
• been the repository of scholarly output (
  publications)
• MUSEUMS have been custodians of specimens
• Some other physical objects
• end up in TRADITIONAL ARCHIVES

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Archiving

• WHICH products should be preserved
• HOW should they be preserved
• WHERE should they be preserved
• Locally, supercomputers, electronic archives,
  etc.

Metadata retrieval requires excellent
documentation Software versions a practical
challenge, not a technical one (remember Gene
Stoermer!)
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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences and other molecular data
• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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Internet Archive
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Mr. Peabodys WayBack Machine
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Caveats Pages Not Archived

• Anything requiring interaction with the server
• Forms, database-generated content
• Javascript not resolving in true URLs
• Server-side image maps
• Pages with robot exclusion headers (robots.txt)
• Orphan pages (no links into)
• Unknown sites

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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences and other molecular data
• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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Images

• Scanned
• Resolution
• Format standard TIF?
• Produced digitally
• Format evolution of production software if not
  saved as flat TIF

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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences and other molecular data
• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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Literature, Reports, Field Journals...

• Issues similar to images
• Format evolution
• Media migration
• Metadata for retrieval
• OCR for finding individual items
• Solutions are library-like, requiring recurring
  infusions of
• Personnel
• Migrate as formats evolve, versions change
• Time
• Digital lifetime determination

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Literature, Reports, Field Journals...
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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences and other molecular data
• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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Gene sequences and other molecular data
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Electronic PEET Products

• Project web pages
• Images
• Literature - publications, reports, field
  journals
• Gene sequences

• Character matrices keys
• Databases - data structure

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Character Matrices Keys

• DELTA/INTKEY (example of standard in danger of
  format evolution)
• Lucid (now in Version 3.4)
• MacClade
• PAUP
• Hennig86
• MorphoBank
• Others

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Relational Databases Content Structure

• Archiving
• Metadata essential for discovery
• Convert to flat files
• Software-independent format (e.g. comma
  delimited)
• Lose relational structure but relationships can
  be coded

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Relational Databases Content Structure

• Continued service
• Version changes
• High maintenance (some require professional DBA)
• One size generally does not fit all makes it
  difficult to pass on
• Maintain also front end (required for queries)
• scripting language e.g. ColdFusion, PHP

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a SILVER BULLETorSILVER BUCKSHOT?
TO MAINTAIN ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC RESEARCH PRODUCTS

• Concentration of resources vs. discovery of new
  methods by diversification

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Demonstrate value / usefulness
Hits / citations Can be problematic for
taxonomy / systematics Become part of large
entity
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www.iobis.org
the main provider of marine data to
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• Maintaining functionality

LIBRARIES have been custodians of scholarly
knowledge
A distributed resource PORTAL CONTRIBUTORS
OBIS GBIF FishBase Consortium
Individuals Institutions
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DIGITAL LIBRARIES
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Develop a clear technical and financial strategy
create policy for key issues consistent with the
technical and financial strategy.

• The Foundation should actively engage with the
  community to ensure that community policies and
  priorities are established and then updated in a
  timely way.

www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsb0540
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Recurring Challenges

• Personnel
• Time
• Format evolution / back compatibility
• Metadata complete, appropriate (controlled
  vocabulary)
• Digital lifetime - determining what, if anything,
  should be truly discarded

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ITS UP TO US