Engaging in E-Science through Project Partnership

This poster provides an overview of the role of academic and science libraries in DataONE, a distributed sustainable digital data preservation and access network for earth, environmental and ecological sciences funded as one of two initial DataNet projects by the National Science Foundation. The poster presents a case study highlighting (1) the role of librarians and libraries in DataONE, (2) the structure of the DataONE virtual organization, and (3) the kinds of services that libraries will provide as they develop their capacity to curate digital data. Librarians are involved at all stages of the project – proposal development, needs analysis, data collection, standards development, outreach and instruction, end-user support, LIS research, data curation, and preservation. DataONE uses inclusive organizational structures and processes to integrate digital, academic, and science librarians with research networks, governmental organizations, international organizations, data and metadata archives, professional societies, NGOs, the commercial sector, and synthesis and supercomputer centers/networks to form an economically and technologically sustainable virtual organization. The librarians involved in this project plan to build distributed services to provide user instruction, global virtual reference services, and support the dissemination of best practices for collecting "born archival" scientific data. Participating libraries will evolve to support the discovery and long-term (decades to centuries) preservation of diverse multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national science data collected by biological (genome to ecosystem) and environmental (atmospheric, ecological, hydrological, and oceanographic) scientists, national and international research networks, and environmental observatories.