Tyler O. Walters,Associate Director, Technology & Resource ServicesLibrary & Information Center, Georgia Institute of Technology

For NSF Site Visit to MIT, February 8 2010

To establish a system of federated, distributed data repositories. (GT: recognizes need for this research infrastructure)

Shared background with MIT, DSpace development since 2003

Collaborate on data curation research and services, start with neurosciences and biosciences

GT is committed to advancing its data curation program (created “research data librarian” position)

GT/GSU Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI)

http://www.cabiatl.com/CABI/ (Chris Rordan, Director)

CABI = 27 PIs / faculty + 35-40 researchers, Center holds ca. 120 TB

Neuroscience: leading example of a domain that will curate its data in a diffuse fashion; hence, university-level solutions will become significant

fMRI brain studies -- Formats: DICOM, NIfTI, and EEG numeric data

Work with Prof. Paul Corballis: http://psychology.gatech.edu/corballislab/

Data Dissemination: publisher rules vary -- researchers desire linking e-publishing activities with final data, however, they struggle with how best to enact primary-secondary source relationship

2007-09: Library Data Curation Work Group Interviewed researchers about data practices/needs, collected interview

data

2009-10: Research Data Project Librarian & Workgroup Continue assessments of faculty data practices (using DAF)

Library’s Digital Development Team Assessing & implementing technology infrastructure for data curation

Core systems for data curation Sun StorageTek 2540 disk arrays / SL 500 Tape Library / Sun SAM server &

ZFS Work with MIT technology stack for data curation Extended storage and preservation services (external partners, e.g.

MetaArchive, Chronopolis, consider new DuraCloud service)

MIT: Martinos Imaging Center / GT: Ctr. for Advanced Brain Imaging

Synergies in data curation to advance science through data sharing, publishing, and preservation

The GT Team: Library: data curator, storage/network manager, programmer,

repository librarian, psychology librarian, AD for technology (Walters)

OIT: director of infrastructure and architecture (Chen)

CABI: Prof. Corballis, graduate student

Advisors: Prof. David Bader, Exec. Director, High-Performance Computing

Dr. Bill Underwood (GTRI), digital archives research Prof. Leo Mark (Computing), atmospheric science data

curation

Data deposition/acquisition/ingest SIPs prepared by CABI graduate student / GT Research Data Librarian

Data curation and metadata management Collaborate on metadata guidelines, policies on access, retention, formats ,

etc.

Data protection (policies, tools, procedures) Chen (OIT), Baines (OIT Info. Security), Helms and Walters (Library), Corballis

(CABI)

Data discovery, access, use, dissemination Collaborate on portal design, descriptive metadata for expert and citizen use

Data interoperability, standards, integration Identify, develop, and use in-common ontologies, semantic frameworks, data

transfer and integration protocols between partners

Data evaluation, analysis, and visualization Build technical framework to incorporate researcher’s tools