Presented by Kathryn Dan and Andrew Treloar
Have you ever heard of cyberinfrastructure, grid computing or synchrotron science? What about e-research? E-research is the term being used by government, universities and the research community to describe the impact of technology on research activity. Research is changing with the availability of immense data sets, large scale computing facilities that operate across the globe and increasing virtual collaboration across disciplines. Research facilities and universities are in the business of data acquisition and collection on a larger scale than ever before (dealing in tera-, peta- or exa-bytes as a matter of course). They are building digital repositories and developing policies for management of the data arising from e-research. Few are discussing ‘records’.
What implications do e-research and data management policies have for the recordkeeping profession? Where can recordkeeping professionals intervene to ensure a record of innovative e-research is captured? How can we learn from the development of these research-based digital repositories?
This paper outlines developments in e-research and the implications for archivists. It describes the work done to define policies, develop preservation repositories, and create new research tools such as annotation software. It challenges the recordkeeping profession to learn from these developments and offers suggestions of where and how archival skills could contribute to the e-research agenda.