Facility-Wide Management and Storage for Scientific Data
EMSL Project ID
30513
Abstract
The preservation of experimentally generated data for long-term storage is perhaps one of the most postponed (or even overlooked) aspects of a sound scientific research program, and is all too often managed through a manual process of copying data to writable media such as DVD-Rs or CD-Rs. This practice, while both common in the scientific community and reasonably effective, is fraught with risks even in a best case scenario, as these physical media can be easily damaged or misplaced. Just as troubling, however, are the logistics of dealing with the huge amount of data that can be produced by means of instrumentation such as mass spectrometers and NMRs, where the sheer volume of physical media can quickly overwhelm even the most prudent of research groups as the stacks of backup discs climb ever higher in someones office. However, even if the fragile and voluminous nature of these media were not an issue, the lack of some type of associated metadata that describes their generation and analysis most certainly would be, as these preserved bits of knowledge need at least a modicum of contextual information in order to remain both relevant and decipherable to later researchers, not to mention searchable for later use.
Project Details
Start Date
2008-06-05
End Date
2010-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator