Data Management Plans: Approaches to Dissemination and Preservation

1. Data Management Plans: Approaches to Dissemination and Preservation Micah Altman* Archival Director, Henry A. Murray Research Archive Associate Director, Harvard-MIT Data Center Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences * Portions of this presentation based on joint work with Charles Franklin, forManaging Social Science Research Data (Forthcoming 2008, Chapman & Hall). However, all errors are certainly my own.

2. Contents Context of a data management plan Technologies for Dissemination Technical and Institutional Approaches to Preservation

3. Data Lifecycle* • Collection • Data Entry & Verification • Processing • Identifier assignment • Internal metadata • Coding • Merging • Cleaning • Research and Publication Support • Documentation, Dissemination • Archiving • Recoding, Secondary Analysis, Merging (… and back to the beginning) Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation *(Rinse, Lather, Repeat)

4. What’s Wrong with the Previous Slide* • Data is changed all the time. • What metadata? • Publications emerge before processing(“the conference is next week”) • Dissemination happens early (sometimes…maybe… if I know you) • Much data is never archived * (So, I lied) Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

5. Questions to ask when developing a Data Management Plan • Who are the stakeholders? • What do the stakeholders require and want? • How does the plan engage with the data lifecycle to ensure these things? • What are the motivating questions, use cases, scenarios? (Example) How do I update all of my tables and figures correctly, when I add the new data the reviewers suggested? (Example) Can I prove the direct connection from data collection to publication, before a hostile prosecutor, in court? Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

6. Stakeholders and Legal Requirements Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

7. Stakeholders Implicated as Information Flows Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

8. Elements of Dissemination • Dissemination  promoting use • Discoverability • Accessibility • Comprehensibility (Oh yeah, ease of ingest… that too.) Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

9. Emerging Technologies for Dissemination* • Institutional Repositories • Web services • Virtual-hosted archives Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation * Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est Fou (Translation: The more things change the more they stay insane)

10. Institutional Repositories Some tradeoffs when used for data: • Generality vs. domain-specific services • Institutional adoption vs. use within institution • Preservation motive vs. Dissemination None of these tradeoffs is fundamental, but reflect current stage of evolution … Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

11. A Web Services Rhebus* + + + ? + = Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation * Can you count how many ’s are in this picture?

12. Archival Virtual Hosting • It’s virtual … • Noting to install • Virtual collections • Institutionally supported • Persistent identifiers and citations • No worries about file formats changing, backups, etc. • All the initial setup work is done for you • You retain total control over • content • Access • presentation Get it now, we’ll set it up and load the data, for free. Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

13. Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn

14. dissemination archiving reuse publishing entry Dissemination Options: Stakeholders and Lifecycles Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation * See, Desmond Dekker

15. Elements of Preservation • Preservation  ensuring the possibility of use • Finding, selecting, acquiring intellectual objects • Identifying intellectual content • Safeguarding • Verifying Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

16. Early 19th Century Thinking on Digital Preservation* I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. *Only half the digits were preserved. Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

17. Technical Strategies to Preservation • Musical Chairs (media & format migration) • Bag and Tag (save as is, decide on action later) • Assume a Can Opener (“Universal Virtual Computer”) • RomZ and EmuZ (emulation) • Freeze-Dry (save a reduced version) Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

18. Institutional Strategies for Preservation* “Ignore it, maybe someone else will take care of it” (internet archive, …) “We’ll always be here” (self-preservation) “We are ever true to [Insert Alma Mater]” (institutional archives) “Ask someone else do it” (ICPSR, MRA, Roper, …) “Ask someone(s) else do it” (Data-PASS, Meta-Archive, ClockSS) “Trust No One” (LOCKSS) Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation *All quotes are entirely fictional :-)

19. Dissemination and Preservation (Mix & Match Examples) • Refactor web pages (slightly) to facilitate LOCKSS (lots of journals!) • Deliver NARA content in Dataverse Network (HARVARD, NARA, CENSUS) • Harvest dataverse content into DSPACE. (MIT, HARVARD) • Replicate dataverse content in SRB (UNC) • Dataverse + Datapass Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

20. Potential Nexuses for Preservation Failure • Technical • Media failure: storage conditions, media characteristics • Format obsolescence • Preservation infrastructure software failure • Storage infrastructure software failure • Storage infrastructure hardware failure • External Threats to Institutions • Third party attacks • Institutional funding • Change in legal regimes • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? • Unintentional curatorial modification • Loss of institutional knowledge & skills • Intentional curatorial deaccessioning • Change in institutional mission Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

21. Institutional Preservation Strategies -- Corollaries There are potential single points of failure in both technology, organization and legal regimes: • Diversify your portfolio: multiple software systems, hardware, organization (e.g., Data-PASS :-) • Find international partners Many combinations of preservation & dissemination strategies are compatible: • Layer technologies and strategies • Leverage dissemination (in a planned way) for preservation (and vice-versa) Preservation is impossible to demonstrate conclusively: • Consider organizational credentials • No organization is absolutely certain to be reliable Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation

22. Get a Dataverse at IQSS Now: micah_altman@harvard.edu IQSS Dataverse Network: http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn Dataverse Network Software: http://TheData.Org Data-PASS http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DATAPASS/ More Information Strategies for Dissemination and Preservation