Preservation and Stewardship Committee Telecon 2013-03-11

Discussion on activity planning.  Curt has added more data on the original document from the winter meeting (see link above in agenda).  Some of these items need more details.  Please look over this and contribute.

Meeting planning - Curt has been reviewing the number of meetings scheduled for the year - we have chosen so many activities we might not be able to fit them into the scheduled meetings.  These activities have subsets and while Curt does not want to lose the cohesiveness of the group, it is probably not important to have everyone available for every call.  See link above.  Curt is proposing offering a weekly telecon slot of side projects that do not need to be part of the larger group meeting - to more specific topics.  But we still come together and talk about broader interactions of the group as a whole during the monthly telecons.

Curt would also like to go through the list of activities and pick a few we can develop more in-depth face to face interactions during the summer meeting.  Now is the time to plan out our portion of the meeting during the summer.  Would like to: go through the activies list, put a few on this meeting activity list, and try to plan out the summer meeting and deliverables.

Denise - having weekly breakouts would be a great idea - we run out of time on some discussions and not everyone is invested in each activity.

Curt - some breakouts might only have 2-3 people but that can still be very helpful.

Reviewing the activity sheet - this is more for brainstorming than a finalized document.  It is open to editing etc.  Curt moved the use cases up to the top, would like to develop a diagram to how these things are all connected.  A lot of these activities are interdependent on one another.  Curt added a few more details and some deliverables.  Would like to focus a few breakouts on our calendar for this topic.  

We will have a breakout session on the 1st of April to discuss use cases.  Sarah will send out an email in advance with information about developing a template for the use cases and how to target individuals to contribute.  Mark shared a link to the ESIP official case study set: http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Use_Cases

Bruce - critical cases for use cases - how data documentation is structured.  For example with Denise’s collection there are three levels.  There is a major problem with developing the structure for records and getting people access to these collections.  Denise agrees with Bruce on the issues with the structures.   Mentioned SESAR which has a basic structure for this type of work - recommendations for organizing these collections.  Bruce does not feel like we have enough examples of how these are structured to even start developing standardization.  Curt added this to the Activities list to have a more focused discussion.  He would like to have a sub meeting set up on this - either focused on physical objects or not.  Denise suggested a general and then later a more specific to physical samples.  April 15th was suggested for a breakout call (Data Collection Structure).  Bruce mentioned a few other ideas that would help with this area (including OAIS model and what are the objects and what are their attributes).  Mark and Ruth are interested in the topic but Mark can not make the 15th.  The topic was moved to the 22nd.  

PCCS - has a number of specific deliverables (journal article).  We could have more of a discussion on this topic and review the NASA and ESIP statements.  It is the fundamental basis for what we are trying to address and can be a foundational document that will be cited in the future.  Use case analysis vs. PCCS - would like to put that off a few weeks until we discuss use cases.  But would people be interested in a discuss on this topic in a breakout meeting?  Denise is interested and would like to include Ruth in the discussion.  April 15th blocked for this topic.  Ruth thinks this is a good time for that paper topic - and suggested an LIS journal for the topic.  Sarah suggested companion articles - in both fields.  Mark spoke about a working group at his organization that is not thinking about a lot of these issues but a similar topic - the general library community is not aware of the topic.  And there needs to be something for the earth science community that gets into less details but discusses the importance of the process.  Bruce mentioned the OAIS model and discussed the issue of stable objects.  Mentioned specifics types of data (at the NCDC) where the object is not stable and using naming conventions with identifiers/versioning.  It is a different scale of the objects we deal with.  The 4/15 call will focus on an LIS article. Ruth feels like the science focused article should not just be opinion based but should an opinion piece for Eos.  Not a full blown article which would be published in Earth Science Informatics - which would be the wrong community.  Denise suggested we could still do a full article later.  Mark suggested First Monday for the LIS community.  This can be an opinion piece as well.  It would have to go in to the justification of how this came about and something to get the community to think beyond the things they typically think of.  Mark mentioned this particular group had a lot of discussion on what provenance means etc.  And the LIS community has not grasped how large the context for these communities can be.  Curt mentioned talking to people and not having them understand why we commit funds/efforts to these types of projects.  Robert Downs said these issues really need to be explored more and teased out to some extent.  What we mean by provenance and context.  This could be a call for action type piece.  Why are you doing this as Curt mentioned.

Ruth noted that the NASA version of the PCCS has the motivation in it but it is not a generalized context.  There is a fair amount of source material.

Contextual at RDA: http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=67

Curt - how will we accomplish this?  Who will accomplish this?  How will we move forward?  Bob Downs volunteered to be part of that group.  A call was set up for 4/15 and 5/20 on the LIS focused article.

Brent would like to do something on the Earth Science side of things.  If you don’t do these things your data isn’t data.  Thinking about data in the long term. A call was set up for 4/15 on the Opinion article.

Identifiers - we did a lot of great work on this topic, it is moving forward.  Identifiers for researchers and ORCID is really taking off.  Beyond that, what other identifiers in the PCCS, do we need, attributes, use cases should we consider?  We discussed previously developing another identifiers survey paper.  Denise thought this fit with the data collection structure topic.  Aggregation stuff Ruth worked on as well fits with this topic.  We could explore that area a lot more.  

Mark - RDA has another working group on persistent identifier types which Ruth is part of.  The focus is to find core identifier types. And an API for requesting that type of information. If we could get ESIP members to contribute to this...  Curt asked if we needed specific identifiers for Earth Science - this ties back into the use cases and PCCS.  Each of these need an identifier.  Mark mentioned this group is abstracting it out another level.  For other domains like life science and social sciences.  One type of identifier that works across domains.  Ruth suggested we still have the telecon to discuss identifiers this group thinks needs to happen, which than can be used to compare to the things coming out of other groups.  Mark suggested reading the RDA case statement as part of this.  Info on PID types in RDA at http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=40  Bruce mentioned reviewing the lifecycle for what is equivalent even if some of the attributes are different.  So for classes of objects.  4/29 was set aside to discuss identifiers.

Curt stressed that the planning document is writeable and people can edit it as far as when they can attend and if they are interested in topics.

Anne would like to have time to discuss the DDS.  It has it’s own call schedule but we can find time here for updates.

ESIP summer meeting proposals.  Curt has listed some but asked if there were additional ones that people would like to add.  Anne mentioned the DDS would like to have a second session on this topic - a panel discuss/session with agency representatives to talk about the scope from their perspective.  Also perhaps a planning session (or blending of the two).

Curt is listing tentative names for someone to write up a paragraph proposal on these topics and send them out to the list to discuss.  Other ideas are welcome.  Denise suggested where we stand on data management training and where we can go with it.  Ruth had suggested Sloan foundation as a potential funder for a few more of these.  Ruth agreed that a meeting/session on this topic would be useful.  Mark suggested doing a test of some of these and getting feedback.  So planning and/or actually running some of these workshops to see how they do.

They are trying to finalize the summer meeting sooner rather than later, so we need to move quickly if we would like to be part of that agenda.

We will continue the activities discussion later.

Anne mentioned needing someone to pick up the process of dealing with the Sloan foundation before April 15th.  Ruth said that there were some gaps in the current set of topics - what do you do in the field.  Curt asked if we can set up a meeting for this - data management and other aspects including funding?  Or can we do that over email.  We have an outline of the modules and this could use some revisiting.  Where would this proposal come from?  Could ESIP the foundation do this?  Ruth said that Carol does not like to compete with her membership but Mark pointed out this is helping these efforts.  Denise offered to send out a doodle poll about this effort.  This will be ad-hoc.  Mark suggested that they be tested as well - do some sort of assessment instead of just building more.  Some have been implemented.  Anne suggested that assessment be part of the proposal.  Mark thinks that this could be just for the assessment.  Make sure we are on the right track before doing more of these.