The 7th Annual Meeting on High Performance Computing and Infrastructure in Norway

NOTUR2008 - ABSTRACTS

The UK's Digital Curation Centre – a sustainable venture

Graham Pryor

The deluge of digital data produced from eScience experiments and computation is both a threat and an opportunity. Properly curated, it should represent a major resource for future generations of scientific research. This has been recognised by the UK's research councils, which have begun to develop data sharing strategies that make new demands of researchers. In 2003, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which has a mission to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of ICT to support education and research, created the UK's Digital Curation Centre (DCC) as a means of addressing this exponential growth in electronic research output. The term "digital curation" was defined as the actions needed to maintain and utilise digital data and research results over their entire life-cycle for current and future generations of users, and the DCC was charged with encouraging and assisting data creators in the use of methods and tools that would preserve these data, providing the capacity to add value by generating new sources of information and knowledge. Initially, the DCC applied itself to testing tools, standards and methods for curation, but more recently it has increased its focus on the eScience community, embedding curation experts within research teams in order to understand the processes and dynamich of research data generation and use. having established an international presence and reputation through its annual conference, publications and strategic associations, and with experience gained in the field, the DCC is now preparing confidently for transition to the delivery of a sustainable portfolio of highly relevant services and tools.

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