Newsline from EDINA
March 2004: Volume 9, Issue 1
The UK is to have a Digital Curation Centre, jointly managed by the JISC and the e-Science Core Programme. Funding began on 1 March 2004, as successful outcome to a response to JISC Circular 6/03 by a consortium comprising the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, which together host the National e-Science Centre, UKOLN at the University of Bath, and CCLRC, which manages the Rutherford Appleton and Daresbury Laboratories.
The DCC intends to support expertise and practice in data curation and preservation, prompting collaboration between the Universities and the Research Councils to ensure that there is continuing access to data of scholarly interest. The initial focus is on research data, but the policy intention is to also address the preservation needs of e-learning and scholarly communication.
Scientists and researchers across the UK generate increasingly vast amounts of digital data, with further investment in digitisation and purchase of digital content and information. The scientific record and the documentary heritage created in digital form are at risk, from technology obsolescence and from the fragility of digital media. The JISC and the academic community have already begun to identify a strategic approach and have invested in a number of scoping studies. Building on that work and the expertise already existing in particular disciplines, the task is now to support UK institutions in storing, managing and preserving these data to ensure their enhancement and continuing long-term use.
Digital curation is a new phrase that includes but also goes beyond that of data archiving and digital preservation, to include the active management and appraisal of data over the life cycle of scholarly and scientific interest: it is thus the key to reproducibility and re-use. The overriding purpose of the Centre is continuing improvement in the quality of data curation and digital preservation. The DCC is not itself to be a digital repository, nor an attempt to impose policies and practices of one branch of scholarship upon another. Having relevance across the full range of scholarly and scientific endeavour, unifying themes include attention to provenance and 'data as evidence'. The challenge is to provide the platform for collaboration.
Working with other practitioners, the DCC plans to:
We have embarked upon a programme of start-up activities that should result in the formal launch of the Digital Curation Centre in October 2004. The web site is in place, and the Helpdesk is taking messages at digitalcuration@ed.ac.uk. Over the coming months we will plan to deliver a Web portal, an e-Journal, an advisory service, and programmes of promotion and outreach, and of standards-based development of registries, testbeds and tools.
EDINA and the Data Library are supporting the DCC through Helpdesk and web site activity, and by seconding staff for the set-up phase: Peter Burnhill acts as its Director (Phase One) and Robin Rice as Phase One Project Co-ordinator. Both do so on a part-time basis, and are working eagerly with other partners in an international search for a full-time director, of world-class calibre, to be in place for the launch in October.