A Tale of Two Systems: Research Data Repositories and Digital Preservation

Abstract

Research data is being created at an incredible rate and it is near impossible to predict which datasets may become future treasure troves of data. There are many historical examples of this - from weather and sea temperature data recorded in hundred-year-old ship logs from the Southern Weather Discovery project informing current climate models to understand climate change; to the Överkalix study which used historical food harvest records and church logs to make groundbreaking epigenetic discoveries. Nowadays data is born digital; hence it requires digital preservation. Digital preservation is defined as “the method of keeping digital materials alive so that they remain usable as technological advances render original hardware and software specification obsolete”. The combined task of making digital records accessible and FAIR while also following best practices in digital preservation is complex, to say the least. Depending on an institution’s or collection’s needs, this most often requires integrating one or more repositories with a preservation system and managing one or more workflows alongside. Determining how to best preserve research data adds another layer of complexity because research data can be very large in size, have diverse file types, and be described by different metadata schemas. This paper describes why and how research librarians can innovate ways to balance these requirements by focusing attention on interoperability and creative technical solutions. It summarizes how a repository can incorporate some aspects of preservation into the platform itself; and uses case studies to examine what a repository / preservation system integration can look like.

Keywords: Digital preservation. Research data. Research Data Repository. Preservation Systems. Interoperability.