Archive management: the missing component

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) views the area of Archive Management, as comprising three components: Information Technology Infrastructure, Customer Service, and Scientific Stewardship. This last component, Scientific Stewardship, can be characterized as the long-term preservation of the scientific integrity, monitoring and improving the quality, and the extraction of further knowledge from the data. As our data volumes increase, this component, while being recognized as being important, has suffered. Without this component, Archive Management is static, sterile, and lacks the true ability to provide meaningful information and knowledge derived from the archived data. Proper Scientific Stewardship is performed by scientists and data managers knowledgeable in the scientific assessment of a particular data type, and the practice will ensure more effective data management.