Should we keep everything forever (reprised)? Preservation review of research data in a repository as an art and a science

Abstract

--This poster was accepted for iPres2018, Boston, USA-- The Illinois Data Bank was established in 2016 as an institutional file-based repository for research data (Hetrick et al. 2018). The service commits to a minimum retention period of five years, after which deposits are to be appraised and potentially reformatted, enhanced, or withdrawn. Preservation review guidelines were established and a “review indicator” was proposed (Anderson et al., 2016) to help curators identify datasets for which an in-depth, human-mediated review may be warranted. Our poster will characterize the datasets deposited during Illinois Data Bank’s first two years in order to evaluate the following: the feasibility and utility of our proposed Review Indicator as currently formulated, and possible actions during initial curation that would minimize or eliminate the need for a five-year review of some datasets. As we continue to explore strategies to assist with the on-going stewardship of complex data collections, we hope that our efforts will spark conversations with, and insights from, others who are responsible for preserving similarly challenging collections