The future of the DCC

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The future of the DCC

• Chris Rusbridge
• E-Science Workshop April 2009

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Contents

• Curation integrated science
• Poetry Philosophy of D H Rumsfeld
• Designated Community Knowledge Base
• DCC services
• Future of the DCC

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Curation

• Wikipedia
• Curator a content specialist responsible for an
  institution's collections and, together with a
  publications specialist, their associated
  collections catalogs.
• Digital Curation the curation, preservation,
  maintenance, collection and archiving of digital
  assets
• Sheer curation an approach to digital curation
  where curation activities are quietly integrated
  into the normal work flow of those creating and
  managing data and other digital assets.
• DCC Digital curation is maintaining and adding
  value to a trusted body of digital information
  for current and future use.

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Integrated Science

• The application of multiple scientific
  disciplines to one or more core scientific
  challenges
• Examples of integrated sciences?
• Archaeology
• Environmental sciences

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Integrated Science implications

• Scientists will be using unfamiliar data,
  therefore
• Data curators and managers must make their data
  available for unfamiliar users!
• And now for something unfamiliar?

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Poetry Philosophy of D H Rumsfeld

• Hart Seely, April 2, 2003,
• SLATE http//www.slate.com/id/2081042/

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A Confession

• Once in a while,
• I'm standing here, doing something.
• And I think,
• "What in the world am I doing here?"
• It's a big surprise.
• May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

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Clarity

• I think what you'll find,
• I think what you'll find is,
• Whatever it is we do substantively,
• There will be near-perfect clarity
• As to what it is.
• And it will be known,
• And it will be known to the Congress,
• And it will be known to you,
• Probably before we decide it,
• But it will be known.
• Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

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The Unknown

• As we know,
• There are known knowns.
• There are things we know we know.
• We also know
• There are known unknowns.
• That is to say
• We know there are some things
• We do not know.
• But there are also unknown unknowns,
• The ones we don't know
• We don't know.
• Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news
  briefing

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The 4th Rumsfeld?

• 3 epistemological classes (???)
• Known knowns
• Known unknowns
• Unknown unknowns
• 4th class?
• Uknown knowns?
• Critical issue for cross-disciplinary sciences

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Some OAIS Concepts?

• Knowledge Base allows a consumer to understand
  something
• Designated Community the set of consumers for
  whom the archive curates something
• Representation Information helps you interpret a
  data object yielding an information object
• The amount and nature of RepInfo required is
  dependent on the Knowledge Base of the Designated
  Community
• If you curate for project colleagues in the short
  term, little if any RepInfo required
• If you curate for those unfamiliar with the data,
  more RepInfo is needed
• (All broadly interpreted!)

• CCSDS (2002). Reference Model for an Open
  Archival Information System (OAIS).
• Retrieved. from http//public.ccsds.org/publicatio
  ns/archive/650x0b1.pdf.

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Time

• KB is f1(DC, t)
• DC is f2(t)
• RepInfo needed is f3(f1(DC, t), f2(t))
• (but none of these concepts can be precisely
  defined!)
• If DC is small and t is short (months to year or
  so), then both may be ignored, and RepInfo be
  assumed part of the KB
• If DC is extensive (eg cross-discipline) and t is
  long (5 years to 25 plus), then RepInfo must be
  articulated
• If t is very long, most bets are off (post-hoc
  reconstruction likely to be needed)

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What might RepInfo include

• Structure information file format definitions,
  etc
• Semantic information data dictionaries, code
  books etc
• Robust methods (working code?)
• Not to mention many kinds of metadata,
  provenance, documentation of hidden assumptions,
  etc
• Cross-domain schemas one approach to articulating
  RepInfo?
• (Never perfect, of course)

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What about Rumsfeld 4?

• Biggest concern with unfamiliar user is clashing
  concepts, eg different baselines, units,
  geographies, granularity
• Especially where terms are ambiguous or
  differently interpreted
• The KBs of two DCs conflict, potentially silently
• Happens all the time, of course
• The unspoken tacit knowledge, unknown knowns!

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Timing

• Curation starts before creation
• Before project proposal!
• Data acquisition should not happen at the end
• Continuous acquisition much better?
• Enforcement or credit for data?

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Other curation issues of concern

• Sustainability (work on your survival)
• Succession (what happens to your data if you
  dont)
• Data audit (know what youve got)
• Data risk assessment (assess your chances of
  loss)
• Repository external audit???
• Provenance computational lineage
• Archiving database changes
• Community proxy roles help your communities
  develop data standards data practices
• DCC has tools support for some of these

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and Research Outputs?

• Need more semantically aware texts to support
  cross-community understanding
• Coded up (cf microformats, RDFa)
• People
• Citations references
• Science features (eg chemicals, reactions)
• Graphs, spectra, tables linking to
• Supplementary data
• PDF is pretty bad at this

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DCC Phase 3

• Post January 2010?
• Smaller (2/3 budget if were lucky)
• Joint planning with JISC
• More tightly managed (hub and spoke)
• No development (says JISC)
• Core services plus optional additional services
• 1st draft seen by JSR
• Feedback session next week

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Proposed core services

• Reference Resources and Exemplars
• Training and Staff Development
• Expertise, Advice, Consultancy and Hands-on
  Support
• Community-building and Information-sharing
  activities
• Data Management and Sharing Plans
• Policy and Strategic Development
• Providing Access to Tools and Toolkits

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Possible additional services

• Development of Tools, Toolkits, Wizards and
  Templates
• Infrastructure Services
• Model licences for data
• Data citation guidelines

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What do you want from the DCC?