JCDL2010 Research Data Papers

I am at the 2010 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL2010) at Surfer's Paradise in Queensland, Australia. Among the many interesting papers are two papers very relevant to those interested in research data issues.

[JCDL2011 will be held in Ottawa, Canada June 13-17 2011. I am the general chair for the conference]

Digital Libraries for Scientific Data Discovery and Reuse: From Vision to Practical Reality
Jillian Wallis, Matthew Mayernik, Christine Borgman and Alberto Pepe
Abstract. Science and technology research is becoming not only more distributed and collaborative, but more highly instrumented. Digital libraries provide a means to capture, manage, and access the data deluge that results from these research enterprises. We have conducted research on data practices and participated in developing data management services for the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing since its founding in 2002 as a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. Over the course of 8 years, our digital library strategy has shifted dramatically in response to changing technologies, practices, and policies. We report on the development of several DL systems and on the lessons learned, which include the difficulty of anticipating data requirements from nascent technologies, building systems for highly diverse work practices and data types, the need to bind together multiple single-purpose systems, the lack of incentives to manage and share data, the complementary nature of research and development in understanding practices, and sustainability.

Discovering Australia's Research Data
Stefanie Kethers, Xiaobin Shen, Andrew Treloar and Ross Wilkinson
Abstract. Access to data crucial to research is often slow and difficult. When research problems cross disciplinary boundaries, problems are exacerbated. This paper argues that it is important to make it easier to find and access data that might be found in an institution, in a disciplinary data store, in a government department, or held privately. We explore how to meet ad hoc needs that cannot easily be supported by a disciplinary ontology, and argue that web pages that describe data collections with rich links and rich text are valuable. We describe the approach followed by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) in making such pages available. Finally, we discuss how we plan to evaluate this approach.

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