Methodology focus

While I have made a small start on the second assignment, I need to decide what specific area I should focus on. I'm not sure whether to take a very broad look at what researchers (academic, governmental, commercial?) are doing, or narrow it down to specific types of researchers and subjects. I will be meeting with the biodiversity co-ordinator at my work to discuss how that project has been going, but from what I understand, their focus has been largely life sciences (and some physical sciences?) but I will have to find out more.

The literature review turned up a lot of information about what social science researchers are also doing as well as the fact they are seeking to utilise institutional repositories to organise and store data they find as well. This might (and only maybe) more relevant in a LIS setting. I think you could probably go a bit mad with this though...

One month on...

Thought I'd better check in, one month since the previous post is a bit much. We've had midterm break and have had a few lectures since the holidays, mainly concerning research methods, topics after the break have involved covering quantitative and qualitative research methods in detail up until this point in time. I was somewhat dissapointed at my mark for the first assignment (although it was a decent pass at least!), though the feedback was very useful and I think my main area for improvement is my referencing and possibly the structure of the assignment.

ecollaboration literature review report

eCollaboration in Learning, Teaching and Research
Literature Review Report
Irina Elgort (Lead researcher)
Tony Wilson (Research assistant)

http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz/download/ng/file/group-4/n1381-ecollaboration-in-learning-teaching-and-research---literature-review.pdf

This link is to a report reviewing literature pertaining to e-collaboration discussing trends, virtual research environments (VREs), training needs and how this will impact upon the way scientific research is conducted

Ingrid Masons article

"Virtual Preservation: How Has Digital Culture Influenced Our Ideas about Permanence?
Cbanging Practice in a National Legal Deposit Library" INGRID MASON. Several important issues raised as to the nature of information preservation in the context of a legal library.

Some examples of scientific cyberinfrastructure

World protein data bank http://www.wwpdb.org/ This has been established to enable researchers to utilise data on protein which has been gathered over the years, replicating much of this information is expensive and can take considerable time to do in some cases...

http://www.geongrid.org/ The Geosciences Network is another example of a portal where numerous institutions have collaborated to establish access to data...

http://www.ppdg.net/ Particle physics data grid, physicists and computer scientists collaborating to share data...

http://www.us-vo.org/ US National Virtual Observatory enables researchers to utilise stored experimental data

Sloan digital sky survey http://www.sdss.org/ As stated on the website, a most ambitious project conducted to survey the sky, this website records what has been covered as well as news related to the survey...

http://www.nbirn.net/ Biomedical informatics research network is another case of cyberinfatructure being established to store and enable access to considerable amounts of experiements and data

Although all of the above websites deal with data collected across physical and life science disciplines, some articles within the literature point toward these kinds of approaches being suitable for social sciences and humanities.

Draft hypothesis

Name your Topic of Interest

My topic of interest will be what New Zealand researchers current data curation practice is what what their needs for the future are likely to be, with emphasis on how libraries will facilitate this process

State your Indirect Question

Draft question formulation: Given the considerable amount of data now being created in the course of research, what are New Zealand researchers current data curation practices, and what services are they likely to require in the future. What are some likely services libraries will be able to employ to further enable access to data?

State how Your Answer will help the reader understand something more important

This project will help us understand where New Zealand fits within current initiatives for cyberstructure in terms of what researchers are doing, as well as the main issues they will be confronted by as well as how libraries will be able to assist this process.

State the Significance

The key component will be an exploration of this topic from a New Zealand perspective, having investigated what has been written about overseas as well as looking at some case studies. Exploration of this will be significant as it ties in to strategic direction and government policy pertaining to digital information and storage. New Zealand digital strategy and initiatives such as the KAREN network will be main driving factors for this in the near to distant future.

Identify and state your Sub-problems/Sub-questions and/or Hypotheses

Other sub-problems will be New Zealand's isolation, storage of data, the costs and responsibility of doing so, what researchers feelings are as to the ownership and distribution of data, one hypothesis I have in mind is my hunch that researchers will want the data to be as freely available as possible, however this may be proven wrong depending on some of the information being found...

Some central themes identified

Main themes emerging from the readings include, biodiversity, sustainability, curation, cultural/historical value, economic efficiency, growth, storage, technology/formats, methods of organising and distributing the data, policy, ownership, permissions...