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Some data management questions

(General list courtesy of Mark Parsons, May 2005, with some modifications)

1. Where will the data be archived and how will the data be transferred? (Where possible, indication of archive acceptance and funding is desirable)
2. Is there a need for tools help investigators transfer and register data?
3. Who are the user communities for these data, and how should the data be distributed or made available during the project and afterwards? How will the data be advertised to facilitate data discovery?
4. If data archiving will be distributed, how will users discover and access data across the distributed system?
5. Is there a need for special access tools for visualization, reformatting, regridding, reprojecting, etc.
6. What restrictions will be placed on access and use of the data? How will these be implemented?
7. What metadata standard will be used to describe the data and how will the metadata be generated? (We will probably use the GGD DIF format which can be used to generate nearly equivalent FGDC compliant XML format metadata. Both are good for basic discovery, but incomplete for full stewardship).
8. What other documentation will be generated? How will scientists be involved in the development of documentation?
9. What other standards and best practices should be employed (e.g. OAIS)?
10. Will ancillary information be necessary to interpret the data, and if so how will it be provided?
11. What quality control procedures will be used during data collection and during ingest into an archive or data management system?
12. What overarching and consistent data collection protocols are necessary?
13. Will data need to be reformatted for long-term archiving and broad access (e.g., out of custom or proprietary formats), and if so how will this be done?
14. Should there be any conventions on data formats to facilitate interoperability? Is suitability for model assimilation a consideration?
15. What historical data are necessary?
16. Will any of the data be in analog (i.e., nondigital) form, and if so how will these be archived, documented, distributed, etc.?
17. How will data management be paid for? The NSIDC team will provide a Òlevel of effortÓ, but this may not cover everything.

Last updated 29 Dec 2005 - FF