EGI Community Forum 2014 - Helsinki

E-infrastructures for data preservation and curation

20 May 2014, 11:00

1h 30m

Room 8 (Helsinki University, Main Building)

Workshop Data and knowledge preservation and curation (Track Leaders: J. Shiers, A. Fresa) E-infrastructures for data preservation and curation

Speaker

antonella fresa (Promoter S.r.l.)

Description

The need for novel more efficient and affordable solutions for data preservation and curation is increasing in the Social Science and Humanities, in particular the Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) sector is producing a large volume of digital content that needs to be safely stored and curated, permanently accessed, and easily shared and re-used by researchers. At the same time, the so-called "hard sciences" are demonstrating that research capabilities can really be advanced by the use of e-Infrastructures and that a shared implementation of common e-Infrastructure layers could be beneficial and cost effective. In the last years, e-Infrastructures and DCH communities entered a dialogue and now several data-infrastructure projects exist, whose results can be adapted and re-used in the DCH domain. To this aim, to test the services and tools developed to facilitate the storage, access and preservation of digital data and to provide feedback for the further improvement of such services, fruitful cooperation started among these projects. Aim of this workshop is: - from the one hand to present the first concrete results of the cooperation between different projects - from the other hand to attract new projects and initiatives working in the domain of DCH, e-infrastructures and digital preservation to find synergies and discuss opportunities for cooperation, starting from concrete use cases.

Wider impact and conclusions

The expected impact and results are:
- To continue the discussion and consolidate the network born during the EGI Community Forum in Manchester last year, which encompasses projects that are building data and research infrastructures applicable or dedicated to the CH and the humanities.
- To identify common goals, strategies and synergies between the projects and set up a common plan identifying opportunities and threats in the light of establishing a Virtual Research Community to be acknowledged at European level by the world of e-infrastructure. The plan will chart an approach for targeting the opportunities offered by Horizon2020.

Description of work

DCH-RP (www.dch-rp.eu) is a coordination action co-funded by the European Union under its Seventh Framework Programme whose outcome is a roadmap for the implementation of a preservation infrastructure for Digital Cultural heritage (DCH) which will be the first instance of an Open Science Infrastructure for DCH in 2020.
In the framework of DCH-RP, a special task is devoted to the execution of concrete experiments where e-infrastructure providers and cultural institution work together to test the actual use of distributed computing and storage infrastructures to store and manage cultural digital resources, starting from real scenarios and use cases.
Thanks to the cooperation with other EU projects, among which CHAIN-REDS, EUDAT, SCAPE, SCIDIP-ES, APARSEN and ARIADNE, it was possible to extend the experiments by including services, tools and data coming from these projects, thus improving the value and the relevance of the results.
The workshop will present the first results of these Proof of Concepts, namely:
- Using SCAPE project preservation tools
- Using SCIDIP-ES preservation services
- Integrating EUDAT storage services (including iRODS storage)
- Ensuring (Long-term) Data preservation through APARSEN tools
- Using federated AAI and Cloud services
- Using ARIADNE datasets

Target communities and stakeholders are:
- Researchers in the humanities
- Teaching and learning actors (schools, training centers, university courses)
- Cultural and creative industry for the creative use and re-use of the digital cultural content
- Content providers (e.g. big and small cultural heritage institutions - libraries, museums, archives, other National institutions -, private and public publishers, etc.).
- Policy makers and programme owners
- E-infrastructure providers, technology providers and R&D institutions
- R&D projects and initiatives focusing on e-Infrastructures and digital preservation.

URL(s) for further info

http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/heritage-showcases/dch-rp/