Cyberinfrastructure Collaboration for Distributed Digital Preservation

The data deluge is beginning to have an effect on libraries and archives. As custodians of the scholarly record, libraries and archives are being asked to play an active role in long-term digital preservation in both science and the humanities. A report to the National Science Foundation from the fall 2006 ARL Workshop on the role of academic libraries in the digital data universe states that "the group found that research and academic libraries need to expand their portfolios to include activities related to storage, preservation and curation of digital scientific and engineering data." (To Stand, p 42) One of the major trends in this area is the notion of partnerships, of considering the full set of skills necessary to preserve data for the long term and recognizing that a single group or discipline does not have expertise in all aspects of digital preservation. Libraries and archives provide expertise in information management, organization and accessibility. Computer scientists and engineers provide expertise in the portfolio of technologies required to support digital preservation. Domain scientists and humanities scholars provide expertise in the content of the data to be preserved. In order to be effective, these groups must work together. This poster describes three such collaborations based at the Texas Advanced Computer Center, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and Indiana University.