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...

Introduction and Notes

This is the beginning of my INFO 580 project for completion of my MLIS.

I am very interested in exploring the possibility of New Zealand researchers data curation practices.

ROUGH NOTES:
Although there are many repositories established within academic institutions, I am intrigued by the amount of data researchers must have to manage as well as the possibilities which might exist, not only for data curation, but how researchers might share or collaborate on these.

"New Zealand researchers' data curation practices

Institutional repositories have become popular in the tertiary sector as a way of making academic research more widely available, and also preserving it for the future. There is growing interest in making research data available in a similar fashion, but we currently know little about how New Zealand researchers manage their data, and what data curation services may be needed." - SUPERVISOR

Questions:

Do researchers want to make academic research data more widely available? how do they want to preserve data? Issues involved?
How will this be done? Methods of data curation?
What would be the implications for collaboration?
Use of academic research data by students? Implications?