Preservation and Stewardship Committee Telecon 2013-12-04

Ruth spoke about the data synthesis working group, which worked on a set of principles on data citations.  http://www.force11.org/datacitation. THey are out for comments until the end of the month, and in the first week in January, the comments will be taken into account.  It is not a very big set, about 8.  Ruth hopes that the principles will stabilize and a version will be out for the January ESIP meeting.  If that were to happen, she would like the federation to endorse them.  Carol said this would have to happen at the business meeting, and it would be good to get something out in advance (the specific phrasing).  It should be posted to ESIP -all.  Ruth is worried about the timing.  She notes that endorsement is not the same thing as approval.  A caller suggested sending an email now saying ESIP was involved in creating them, and would like to see some comments of them, and that ESIP may endorse them in the future.  Carol asked for clarification of how ESIP contributed.  It was ESIP members and not as a group.  Ruth participated, Joe Horcle and a few others (including someone else on the call - not sure of name).  Carol said that mapping them to our existing guidelines to show consistency would be useful.  These are principles rather than more directed action.  Ruth suggested our data management or stewardship principles.  There was some discussion as to the timing and what exactly should be mapped.  Ruth thought it would make ESIP look good to be one of the first endorsers.

Mark suggested making this an informational point at the business meeting.  Carol thought that if they were ready to go, it is not a binding document and it would be good to support.  Ruth said they would like to have groups who have endorsed the materials demonstrate their use a year later but our data citation guidelines already exist and do not conflict with these principles.  Mark thought this is a good thing to point out.  That these do not countermanded or caused us to reevaluate our own guidelines.

The plan is , if it is feasible to go for endorsement at the meeting.  Ruth will send out an email after AGU, which demonstrates how it maps to our own guidelines and principles. If they are not ready at that time, we should still be on the business meeting anyways to let me know they exist and to let them know we will be seeking endorsement in the future.

Mark pointed out the importance of this effort and how it was a collaboration from the community and this should help our guidelines advance.

Next topic

The Data synthesis group is hosting a workshop at IDC in San Fran in February.  Ruth volunteered to be on the panel.  She is proposing to talk about ESIP and the citation principles, and ESIP’s citation guidelines, and NSIDC’s implementation of the guidelines.  Ruth asked about funding to sending her to attend the presentation to share.  mark suggested also talking about someone from NOAA and NASA who are both implementing these.  Ruth mentioned USGS and someone else suggested GEOSES.  Bob said they were implementing them as well.  Mark suggested asking the list to see who else is doing this.  Ruth said she can send something to ESIP all after AGU to do a query to see who would like to include their name and logo as someone who is doing this.  She thought it would be a really powerful statement.  And Mark pointed out that would be one way to mention our own existing guidelines while endorsing at the same time.  Ruth thought it showed ESIPs value.  She is going to do this, and asked Carol to remind her in January if she forgets.  Carol suggested if the poster session which proceeds the business meeting, would be a good idea to introduce the topic there and some of these conversations can occur one on one there.  Nancy said it could also be part of the business meeting discussion as well - this meeting and presentation.

Next topic - upcoming ESIP meeting

Is there anything we need to do for preparations for those various meetings?  Bob had said he had committed to presenting at one or two sessions.  One on audit and certification, and does not recall the other.

Data study session

Use case activity follow up

Global change information session

Collection structure group

Bruce said he would try and get a few things out this week.  A powerpoint presentation dealing with ethics.  He discussed this in further detail.  For example, cryptographic details being the same in different versions of digital items in an archive.  he will send something out to the group via email.  (due to technical error we were not able to completely hear his discussion).

Sarah said that she would send out an email after AGU, but likely the session will be built around the outcomes of the poster presentation there.  She did ask that people review the poster at this time, if they can http://commons.esipfed.org/node/1872.

Anne did not think there was anything she needed from this group for that session.  There is a telecon scheduled tomorrow for the data study, but Anne said they are going to reschedule.

Next topic - update on activities

Ruth asked Nancy to talk about the tri fold brochure.  She and Erin have been working with a designer on the tri-fold.  She would see it later today.  Erin will get it printed and bring them out to AGU.  We will need to figure out a distribution point.  Nancy said she still needs to find a place in the exhibition hall to drop off some as well.  This is on track but asked if anyone had any questions or suggestions for a meeting point. Does ESIP have a booth?  Erin said that ESIP has a poster for announcements, Erin will be sending out an email tomorrow about the location of that.  And it can be used as a distribution point.  A number of us have volunteered to hand them out.  Denise said we definitely want to have a large stack for the town hall on Monday.  Another caller suggested the university of Alaska at fairbanks has a booth in the exhibit hall and can be a distribution point.  Denise suggested the AWG booth too.  Nancy said it would be good to have one central distribution point for everyone to pick them up for individual distribution as well.

Ruth pointed out that the meeting is taking place in two buildings, and we might need something in each building, the main building and moscone south.  Nancy did not feel comfortable leaving them unattended.  Ruth asked if the educational section was in a different building than the main exhibition, but that was changed.

Nancy also mentioned that Erin thought it would be a good idea to turn the brochure into a poster at the ESIP winter meeting and then hand them out there.  They have also been working on updating the template for the various educational materials on ESIP commons, to make them more compatible with schema.org, the metadata, to make them more available to search engines.  Bob suggested including a large image of the tri folds, and Erin suggested getting the student fellows to do the tutorials and get some feedback from them on these materials.  This can be discussed at the stewardship meeting.  Ruth said she did have some feedback.  She has been working with the snow hydrology group who is creating a course in January on field work.  She has been working with a researcher who went through a large collection of the videos and provided her a list of feedback.  She liked the videos but her main suggestion would be to provide concrete examples, something tangible to look at.  THis might be very useful.

There were a few PCCS activities - Denise submitted the opinion piece to Science.  The other item in work is a version of that piece to go to the library community.  This effort needs to be re energized, probably after the first of the year.  Ruth suggested it formally be on the agenda for Friday mornings business meeting.  She has a list of items she would like to discuss at the meeting.  We can pick a couple of these activities to make sure we are moving forward.  But not too many that we can not make forward progress.  Things we are going to work on for the next 6 months.

Last topic:

At the last ESIP meeting, we had talked about various people being liaisons to RDA.  A few people had committed to doing that.  Ruth (data citations), Anne (persistent identifiers types) - they had a meeting and she has been following the email list.  It feels kind of like they are rehashing a lot of ground and getting stuck in weeds.  She will post an update here later.  

Carol mentioned that she took part in the community engagement activity at the meeting, and it is not super active at the moment.  There is some movement on the community capability model, which will have a presence at the ESIP winter meeting.  Helping to validate the model, but also see how communities develop.

Ruth made note, that she agreed to participate as a co-chair of the preservation group at RDA, and is having a hard time getting it going.  She has been trying to negotiate a monthly telecon with David, but has not gotten any response regarding the results of that doodle poll.  She is not sure how to move forwards, but it really needs to start making efforts by January.  Mark said he would help.  He thinks it is just a connection issue, and that there is a lot of work being done on both sides.  Ruth thinks this is another area where the work being done at ESIP, has relevance at this larger community.  And is something we can push forward so they are picked up and carried in sync with the broader community.  

Mark said on PID’s they are looking to form a PID interest group, it reaches across so many groups.  That might be a better place to engage depending on how it comes together.

Anne said she would send an invitation to a doodle poll for a dim sum lunch for those who would be there.

Anne’s very brief RDA PIT report:

Note that the group is discussing persistent identifier *types*, not just PIDs.  Here is their wiki for gathering type examples:  https://rd-alliance.org/groups/pid-information-types-wg/wiki/type-examples.html.

The big picture seems to be to define an API, actions on identifiers (e.g., resolution),  and conceptual architecture regarding “properties, types, profiles, and connection to services” (consistent with the RDA goal of implementation).

Via email the group got down in the weeds discussing terminology such as, ‘resource’, ‘identifier’, ‘persistent identifier’, ‘resolvable identifier’,  ‘PID’, ‘identifier scheme’, ‘repository object identifier’’, “property”, “type description”, “profile”, etc.  Some are trying to fit these concepts into a formal definitions.  The point was raised, “are we reinventing the wheel? we should use existing metadata systems”.  The response was, “yes, but our goal is to span them and not pick a favorite”.  Later, the discussion was deemed “too much for this group right now,” and “The pragmatic view here is that we are talking about identifiers that are globally resolvable, associated with information, and have actions enabled on them.”

The CMDI was mentioned as a specific example of a metadata system,  http://www.clarin.eu/content/component-metadata, “a framework to create and use self-defined metadata formats”.  This came from CLARIN, one of the Research Infrastructures selected for the European Research Infrastructures Roadmap by ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.

There are also talk regarding ‘classes of conditions’, such as ‘embargoed’ data.  I’m not sure how this is relevant to PITs…

Regarding implementation, personal and organizational resources are needed, apparently on a voluntary basis.

There is discussion regarding creating an umbrella Interest Group on PIDs.

The next virtual meeting will be the 3rd week in December.