Foundational concepts of data services

1. Foundational conceptsof data services • Collections • Services • Preservation • Access

2. Collections • Collections are a selection of data reflecting the interests and needs of a specific user community. • Collections enable preservation. • Collections enable service. • Collections are an asset. • Collections can leverage the resources of a community for the benefit of the community.

3. Services • Services constitute the provision of expertise, resources, and facilities that removes barriers to and facilitates the use of data. • Metadata production • Organization of information • Discovery • Reference • Interpretation • Tools and facilities • Instruction • Access

4. Preservation • Preservation protects an asset ensuring its long-term availability and usability. • Preservation must be intentional and planned. • Preservation must have institutional commitment. (Cannot rely on the life-span any one individual.) • One must obtain sufficient control of the information (i.e. the collection) to ensure long-term preservation. • Preservation does not happen accidently.

5. Access • Access is the ability to acquire or use a data resource. • A key principle of data services is data sharing and open access to data. • It is also essential to manage access to ensure the confidentiality and privacy of human subjects. • Access presumes that there is a collection. Collection could be local or remote, owned or leased, etc. • Control of the collection determines extent of access. (e.g., can you get statistics, but no data?)

6. ACCESS PRESER-VATION balance There is a potential tension between preservation and access. • It is possible to preserve data without providing access. (e.g., “dark archive”) • It is possible to provide access to data without committing to preserving it. (e.g., commercial economic data services)

7. For years, preservation simply meant collecting. The sheer act of pulling a collection of manuscripts from a barn, a basement, or a parking garage and placing it intact in a dry building with locks on the door fulfilled the fundamental preservation mandate of the institution. In this regard, preservation and access have been mutually exclusive activities often in constant tension…. Access mechanisms, such as bibliographic records and archival finding aids, simply provide a notice of availability and are not an integral part of the object.

8. In the digital world, the concept of access is transformed from a convenient byproduct of the preservation process to its central motif… Paul Conway Head, Preservation Department Yale University Library. "Preservation in the Digital World" Council on Library and Information Resources, Pub62

9. COLLEC-TIONS SERVICES balance There is a potential tension between collections and services. • It is possible to have a collection of data and provide no services. (e.g., researchers who put their data on the internet) • It is possible to provide services without having a collection of data. (e.g., ICPSR member library)

10. balance

11. SERVICES ACCESS PRESER-VATION COLLECTIONS balance

12. balance The exercise requires you to reflect on your institution’s provision of data services in the context of two dimensions: • access—preservation and • collections—services. Do not think of each of these dimensions as a continuum representing some underlying property but rather as related concepts that together contribute to the balance of an overall function. We would like you to express in a graph the degree to which each of these four concepts is developed. Use the length of each axis to represent the state of each concepts development.

13. balance services access preservation collections