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A poster presented at the JISC RDM Workshop, March 2013

This is a presentation given at the Community Capability Model for Data-Intensive Research Workshop at the International Digital Curation Conference 2013, Amsterdam, 14th January 2013

This talk will describe the state of the art of digital curation in the UK. A number of ongoing projects will be touched on. The activities of the recently formed Digital Curation Centre will be discussed in some detail. In addition some of the national legislative and funding drivers will be outlined.

For many decades, computer-aided design (CAD) packages have played an important part in the design of product models within the engineering domain. Within the last ten years, however, the increasing complexity of CAD models and their tighter integration into the workflow of engineering enterprises has led to their becoming the definitive expression of a design. At the same time, a paradigm shift has been emerging whereby manufacturers and construction companies enter into contracts to take responsibility for the whole lifecycle of their products – in effect, to sell their product as a service rather than as an artefact. This makes necessary not only the preservation of the product’s design, but also its continuing intelligibility, adaptability and reusability throughout the product’s lifecycle. The CAD models themselves, though, are typically in closed formats tied to a particular version of an expensive proprietary application prone to rapid obsolescence. While product lifecycle management (PLM) systems deal with some of the issues arising from this, at present it is not possible to implement a comprehensive curation and preservation architecture for CAD models, let alone the other forms of engineering information. In order to fill in some of the gaps in a possible architecture, we have developed two tools to aid in the curation and preservation of CAD models. The first is a preservation planning tool for CAD models: a Registry/Repository of Representation Information for Engineering (RRoRIfE). The tool uses Representation Information, as defined by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model, to advise on suitable strategies for migrating CAD models to archival or exchange formats. The second – Lightweight Models with Multilayered Annotations (LiMMA) – is an architecture for layering non-geometric information on top of a geometric model, regardless of the format used for the geometric model. We envision this architecture being used not only to create flexible, lightweight archival representations of model data, but also to facilitate better information flows between a design team and the rest of the extended enterprise.

This presentation provides an overview of the work undertaken by the I2S2 Project (funded under the Research Data Management Infrastructure strand of the JISC's Managing Research Data Programme)

This abstract briefly highlights the data management challenges brought by the advent of modern computational methods and rapidly growing range of high through scientific equipments in the domain of structural sciences. Our requirement gathering exercises have revealed a significant gap between state of the art technologies and current data management practice. There are significant variations in data management requirements between individual researchers and facility service providers. Highly isolated technological solutions have been adopted by different stakeholders, making it hard for researchers to manage their experimental data which can be generated, collected, and analysed over a period of time at places across different collaborations. We also describe our approach to address this problem by presenting a loosely coupled architectural framework for managing scientific data lifecycles. We expect that the support for overlapping investigations and datasets will open up a whole range of possibilities to cross-examine datasets from different angles over time and space, ultimately, enabling existing isolated data management solutions to scale up to embrace the excitements brought by open research era.

The Infrastructure for Integration in Structural Sciences (I2S2) Project is funded under the Research Data Management Infrastructure strand of the JISC’s Managing Research Data Programme, with a duration of 18 months (Oct 2009 to March 2011).One of the main aims of the project is to investigate the research and data management infrastructure needs of researchers in the Structural Sciences (incorporating a number of disciplines including Chemistry, Physics, Materials, Earth, Life, Medical, Engineering, and Technology). We define research infrastructure to encompass physical, informational and human resources essential for researchers to undertake high-quality research, including: tools, instrumentation, computer systems and platforms, software, communication networks, technical support (both human and automated); documentation and metadata.

A presentation on the progress of the I2S2 project at the JISC MRD Progress Meeting, Manchester Conference Centre, 17-18th May 2010

A presentation on the on-going requirements gathering work undertaken for the JISC I2S2 project.

This poster will describe several issues as well as the work undertaken in relation to the effective curation and preservation of crystallography data within the context of the eCrystals Federation Project. The aim of the Project is to enhance the management of crystallography data at the institution level, incorporating data generated in departments, laboratories and by individual researchers or practitioners; consequently, the work described is concerned with the development of approaches to the preservation and curation of crystallography data in open repositories. For the crystallography community, the long-term provision of data is particularly important since structure determination can only be truly repeated or verified when the raw data is available. In addition, the availability of raw and derived data is very useful for reanalysis and reprocessing as improved methods for performing these tasks emerge.

International audience; Companies operating in today's global economy are increasingly expected to manage the entire lifecycle of their products, and are finding advantage in a distributed, collaborative working style.. Existing 3D CAD systems are not well adapted to this way of working, however. This paper highlights some limitations in the current applications, and presents a framework for overcoming them based on three strands of current research: lightweight representations, the annotation of CAD models, and representation information as defined by the Open Archival Information System Reference Model (ISO 14721:2003). In the proposed framework, a 'stand-off' method is used to layer information, in the form of annotations, on top of both CAD models and lightweight representations alike. These annotations can be circulated independently of the geometry, facilitating more flexible information flow across the whole product lifecycle. The approach is demonstrated with an industrial case study.

The aim of the eCrystals Federation project is to enhance the management of crystallography data at the institution level, incorporating data generated in departments, laboratories and by individual researchers or practitioners. WP4 of the project is concerned with the development of approaches to the preservation and curation of crystallography data in open repositories. In terms of the crystallography community, the long-term provision of data is particularly important since structure determination can only be truly repeated or verified when the raw data is available. In addition, the availability of raw data is extremely useful for reanalysis and reprocessing as improved methods for performing these tasks emerge.Metadata is essentially any information that documents the characteristics and attributes of a resource. The term is often defined as “structured data about a resource”. A metadata vocabulary supports a wide variety of functions, for example description, identification, discovery, retrieval, rights management and preservation. Metadata is consequently pivotal in the management of all types of resources, helping to ensure that they will survive and continue to be accessible and usable into the future. A structured set of metadata elements is normally organised into a schema, representing a data model and the attributes associated with the entities within it.We consider that preservation activities should be viewed as an integral part of sound data management practice. As a result, metadata that supports curation and preservation should be embedded into the core metadata for managing crystallography data. However, metadata creation, capture and maintenance is generally regarded as being tedious, time-consuming, subjective and labour-intensive and therefore very costly. Given the critical role that metadata plays in the management and curation of electronic resources it is important to craft the structure and architecture of the metadata correctly from the outset so that adequate and appropriate information is recorded.We examine work that has already been done in the area of preservation metadata, in particular the influence of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (PDI – Preservation Description Information) and the PREMIS (PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies) working group which has produced a Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata – a core set of preservation metadata i.e. “the information most preservation repositories need to know to preserve digital materials over the long-term”.Preservation metadata is information that supports and documents the digital preservation process. It is sometimes considered a subset of technical or administrative metadata and incorporates:Provenance: Who has had custody or ownership of the digital object?Authenticity: Is the digital object what it purports to be?Preservation Activity: What has been done to preserve the digital object?Technical Environment: What is required to render and use the digital object?Rights Management: What intellectual property rights must be observed?The primary aim of preservation metadata is to support preservation activities; consequently, differing preservation strategies are likely to demand that distinct types of information be recorded. For example, a preservation plan based on migration activities will require different information to that of one based on emulation. Hence, the preservation plans and policies of a particular repository will heavily influence the additional specific metadata that is to be recorded.The technical aspects of digital curation and preservation are only one facet of a multidimensional problem; curatorial issues further encompass social, cultural, political,organisational, financial and legal factors as well. Community consensus and the development of standards and guidelines for best practice underpin the longevity, effective management, preservation, sharing and reuse of science data. To this end, a collaborative venture named Towards an International Data Commons for Crystallography (TIDCC) emerged as a result of discussions between participants in the TARDIS (The Australian Repositories for Diffraction Images), eCrystals Federation and DataMINX Projects and the Australian Research Council’s Molecular & Materials Structure Network (MMSN) in September 2008. The intention of the TIDCC is to develop a community derived metadata schema capable of describing all types of crystallography data related to single crystal diffraction.We use the notion of an Application Profile (AP) in contemplating the metadata required to manage and preserve crystallography data, building on several schemas including that of the eBank-UK AP; the TARDIS schema and the CCLRC Scientific Metadata Model (CSMD). The purpose of an AP is to adapt or combine existing schemas into a package that is tailored to the functional requirements of a particular application, whilst retaining interoperability with the original base schemas. This offers the potential for digital materials to be accessed, used and curated effectively both within and beyond the communities in which they were created.The TIDCC Metadata Application Profile (TMAP), which is presented in an Appendix, was a first attempt at constructing an over-arching AP for crystallography data which would facilitate the exchange of not only metadata, but also the data itself. However, following several meetings is has become apparent that a more effective way forward is to adapt the ICAT data model (a simpler version of the CSMD) and schema to cater for curatorial and preservation activities since ICAT is presently being used by a growing proportion of the science community for managing their data. As of the completion of this report, the work is still in progress; it is expected that the preservation metadata proposed in the TMAP will feed into the new development.It is clear that the crystallography community recognises the importance of high quality metadata for all the functions that it can support, including the long-term accessibility and reuse of scientific data. Although there is still a considerable way to go along the path to formulating community agreed metadata for the curation and preservation of crystallography data, the work outlined in this report proves that the crystallography community appreciates the benefits and does not lack the motivation to achieve such as goal.

The aim of the eCrystals Federation project is to enhance the management of crystallography data at the institution level, incorporating data generated in departments, laboratories and by individual researchers or practitioners. The project is attempting to set up a federation of institutional repositories for the management and dissemination of derived and results data from crystallographic experiments. WP4 of the project is concerned with the development of approaches to the preservation and curation of crystallography data in open repositories. We consider that preservation planning and its associated activities should be viewed as an integral part of sound data management practice. However, one of the obstacles to proactively undertaking preservation and curation activities identified by the interim report of the Blue Ribbon Task force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access is a fear that digital access and preservation is too big a problem to take on. Given their wide-ranging influences and multi-faceted nature, it is no surprise that curation and preservation are considered by many to be daunting tasks. Stewardship of research data is undoubtedly a substantial commitment to sign up to with major implications for funding and resources. Nevertheless, today’s repository managers are under increasing pressure to provide expertise in IT skills, domain knowledge and preservation issues. We consider that expertise in all three areas is essential for the effective management of digital research data and in this report focus particularly on curation and preservation issues.Over the last two decades a huge amount of research has been undertaken with respect to particular aspects of digital curation and preservation resulting in an accumulation of tools, frameworks and guidance; our aim is to raise awareness of these and guide repository managers to a subset which is relevant to the long-term management of crystallography data. Our objective has been to break down the process of preservation planning into manageable components, thus providing a starting point for managers of repositories to consider the likely preservation issues specific to their particular repository. We illustrate various aspects of preservation planning with reference to an exemplar crystallography data repository supported and run by the EPSRC National Crystallography Service (NCS) based at the University of Southampton.Social, political, cultural, organizational, financial, legal and technical issues will all impact on a commitment to the long-term management of digital data. As a result preservation planning has to be undertaken in the organisational context and specific circumstances of a repository. Consequently, the solutions forged will be specific to each repository – there is no “one size fits all” solution. In addition, we recognise that there is considerable diversity in crystallography laboratory practice which will require customised preservation planning.Nevertheless, we believe that there are generic methodologies and tools which can be applied in order to help achieve preservation plans appropriate to individual repositories. We have therefore attempted to break down the process of preservation planning into various practical aspects, including (analysis of data and workflows; evaluation of preservation requirements; defining a preservation policy; formulating a preservation strategy; recording preservation metadata; modelling costs; planning for sustainability; and regular evaluation or self-assessment). Given the complexity of the topics and issues involved (even for a sub-discipline such as crystallography) the coverage focuses on breadth rather than depth.

An invited presentation at the Chemistry in the Digital Age: A Workshop Connecting Research and Education,Penn State University, PA, US, June 2009

The eCrystals Federation project is concerned with setting up a federation of institutional repositories for the management and dissemination of the raw, derived and results data from crystallographic experiments [1]. It builds on the work of the eBank-UK project [2] which developed and implemented the eCrystals repository [3], focusing on the workflows of the laboratory based experimental technique of chemical crystallography undertaken at the EPSRC National Crystallography Centre (NCS) based in Southampton. Following the creation of a completed crystal structure determination, data is uploaded into eCrystals and supplemented with chemical and bibliographic metadata. A subsequent scoping study, undertaken as part of phase 3 of the eBank-UK project identified several issues pertinent to the curation and preservation of crystallography data [4], amongst them was the importance of the concepts underlying the OAIS Reference Model [5] and its associated notion of Representation Information (RI). Consequently, this report is concerned with an investigation of RI for crystallography data and its role in the curation, maintenance and management of such data. We begin with a brief overview of aspects of the OAIS Reference Model [5] which establishes a conceptual framework of terms and components for use in the preservation of information. The Model also identifies the environment within which an OAIS operates as well as its basic functions in the form of functional, information and information flow models. The notions of a Designated Community (DC) and its associated Knowledge Base (KB), as well as RI are also defined. RI is any information required to render, process, interpret, use and understand data; for example, it may be a technical specification, or a data dictionary or a software tool. To preserve digitally encoded information over the long term the OAIS Model requires that information remain accessible, understandable and usable by a specified DC. A DC is a group of users or consumers for whom the data is being maintained. Within the OAIS Model, intelligibility of the data by the DC is of paramount importance and RI is a key concept in achieving this [13]. The Model identifies three main types of RI: structural, semantic and other. In section 3, we describe the development of a registry/repository of RI (RRoRI) [18] which aims to make relevant RI available in a readily accessible manner to third parties. The work is heavily based on the ideas in the OAIS model; it centres on the notion that RI is critical to the long-term access of digital information [19], [20]. The current implementation of RRoRI is based on the use of standards (ebXML) and freely available registry/repository software (freebXML) with its associated JAXR interfaces. As explained in 3.2, access to RI by third parties is enabled through the use of two key concepts: Curation Persistent Identifiers (CPIDs) and descriptive RI labels [24].The crystallography domain and the workflow of the NCS are then examined in order to identify significant RI. Procedures at the NCS indicate that a number of well-defined, sequential stages are readily identifiable. At each stage, an instrument or computational process produces an output, saved as one or more data files which provide input to the next stage. The output files vary in format, they range from images to highly-structured data expressed in textual form. We have found that the Crystallographic Information File (CIF) format is central to working with contemporary crystallography data as well as maintaining access to its information content in the future. CIF is used as a publishing format; as well as being structured and machine-readable, it is capable of describing the whole experiment and modelling process.As a result, section 6 clarifies the relationship between various types of CIF RI, including structure (file format specification), semantic (data dictionaries) and other (software). These relationships are then used to develop an RI Network for the CIF format. Section 7, goes on to describe an ingest tool which allows RI to be input into RRoRI, as well as describing the crystallography RI that has been submitted to RRoRI so far. A simple use case scenario, in section 8, describes how the RI stored in RRoRI may be used in order to gain access to the information content of a CIF instance by someone unfamiliar with that file format. We conclude with a discussion of the role of RI in curating and maintaining access to crystallography data and pointers to further work:- The range and quantity of RI required for even a simple collection of data is potentially enormous. It is therefore practical to develop a collaborative and shared approach to the problem. It would benefit the whole community if service providers and developers of work-up software (e.g. SHELXS, SHELXL, XPREP) were to provide and maintain comprehensive descriptions of their file formats; also the export of raw data in the draft standard imgCIF/CBF (Crystallographic Binary Format) [36], by crystallographic instrumentation software is recommended. - Explicit recording of relevant RI in a central and managed registry/repository such as RRoRI ensures that the CIF file format can be understood well into the future by those working across different disciplines as well as providing intelligible long term access to crystallographers.- In order to associate an RI Network with the CIF files stored in the eCrystals repository, it would be necessary to record a CPID in the metadata record for each CIF instance file. This CPID would act as a point of entry into RRoRI by pointing to an RI label.- It is likely that RI in itself may not be sufficient to guarantee effective access and reuse of digital data in the future; additional metadata such as reference, provenance, context and fixity information will also need to be recorded and maintained.- RI will itself need to be curated and maintained to provide trusted, authoritative and secure RI that allows users to rely on its authenticity and integrity; this could perhaps be overseen by the DCC.- Long term curation of the contents of a registry/repository of RI would have to be guaranteed through adequate sustainability and succession planning, perhaps with an organisation of guaranteed longevity such as the NARA, The National Archives or The British Library. - An alternative to relying on a generic, central registry/repository is for the crystallography discipline to develop its own RI registry/repository maintained by the community or a body such as the IUCr. Such a registry/repository would form part of a global and distributed network of RI. The web pages currently maintained by the IUCr, while certainly providing up-to-date information on the CIF file format, are at present suitable only for human access. A registry/repository modelled on the RRoRI would cater for automated machine processing. - Furthermore, we can envisage that registries/repositories of RI would have a valuable role to play in the shared services infrastructure part of the JISC Information Environment, helping to provide convenient access to data for both research and learning.

A presentation given at the RECURSE Workshop, IDCC 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland

During the last decade the management of a product's data over its entire life has been gaining prominence. This is largely due to two factors: firstly, an increasingly collaborative environment in which product development and maintenance takes place in a geographically distributed and networked environment. Secondly, there is an emerging economic paradigm shift in which companiesthat design and build products are increasingly entering into contracts to provide through-life support for them - that is, products arebeing purchased as services rather than artefacts. For engineering companies, this shift entails a commitment to supporting products over a much longer timeframe than previously expected. At the same time, there is an increasingly greater reliance on CAD modelswhich are now being used as the method for recording definitive product data. However, the CAD software industry is characterised by ephemeral, backwardly incompatible, proprietary applications and file formats which readily become obsolete, making the longtermretention and accessibility of digital product models and data a challenge.We examine the curation and preservation requirements in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and suggest ways of alleviating the problems associated with the sustained representation of CAD engineering models through the use of lightweight formats, layered annotation and the collection of Representation Information as defined in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model.

This study was undertaken as part of the wider Community Development Programme, under Phase 2 of the DCC, which aims to address the curation and preservation needs and requirements of UK data centres. Its goal was to investigate the perceived roles and responsibilities of data centres, how they operate in practice, what policies and standards they apply, and the strategic and operational challenges they are currently encountering. The aim was to identify where best practice can be shared and which areas would benefit from collaboration, at the same time highlighting issues that are of common interest as potential threats or opportunities to the data centre community. The results of the analysis and the insights gained from the survey will contribute to the planning of national fora sponsored by the DCC, as well as other Community Development activities.The study comprised a series of visits to UK data centres and an online questionnaire. It was undertaken over the period August - December 2007; the writing up and synthesis of the results taking place between January-February 2008. UK data centres that have substantial data holdings were targeted, with a particular emphasis on those that deal with large research datasets. The short timescale available to the study has meant that we received only six responses to our survey:Medical Research Council (MRC)UK Data Archive (UKDA)EDINAArchaeology Data Service (ADS)Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC-RAL)NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC)

Recently the funding councils in the UK stated that ‘the data underpinning the published results of publicly-funded research should be made available as widely and rapidly as possible’.Thirty years ago research students would present about five crystal structures as their PhD thesis, however with modern technologies and good crystals this can now be achieved in the timespan of a single morning. This increase in pace of generation further exacerbates a problem in the communication of the results. Additionally, the general route for the publication of a crystal structure report is coupled with and often governed by the underlying chemistry and is therefore subject to the lengthy peer review process and tied to the timing of the publication as a whole. This bottleneck in the dissemination of crystal structure data hinders the potential growth of databases and the data mining studies that are reliant on these collections (just 500,000 small unit cell crystal structures are available in the CSD, ICSD & CRYSMET). In addition, publication in the mainstream literature still offers only indirect (and often subscription controlled) access.The eBank-UK (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/projects/ebank-uk) project addressed this problem by establishing an institutional data repository that supports, manages and disseminates metadata relating to crystal structure data. The Southampton eCrystals repository (http://ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk) that arose from this project makes available all the derived and results data from a crystallographic experiment in a controllable manner and with little further researcher effort after the completion of a structure. This process alters the traditional method of peer review by openly providing crystal structure data where the reader or user may directly check correctness and validity. Not only does this approach allow rapid release of crystal structure data into the public domain, but it can also provide mechanisms for value added services that allow rapid discovery of the data for further studies and reuse, whilst ownership of the data is retained by the creator.Building on the success of this prototype repository, the eCrystals Federation project (http://wiki.ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk) will establish a network of such crystallographic data repositories across an international group of partner sites. Data from the Southampton repository has been harvested by CCDC and the CDS and the project is additionally working with IUCr, RSC, Chemistry Central and Nature to establish protocols for scaleable harvesting mechanisms across the network. By engaging data centres, librarians, researchers, publishers and third party information providers we will develop approaches to the preservation and curation of scientific data in open repositories (the UK based Digital Curation Centre is a partner in the project).A fully interactive demonstration of the Southampton eCrystals software will be possible at the meeting and strategies for the installation and population of repositories at new sites will also be outlined, based on the experience of early adopter sites.

For many decades, computer-aided design (CAD) packages have played an important part in the design of product models within the engineering domain. Within the last ten years, however, the increasing complexity of CAD models and their tighter integration into the workflow of engineering enterprises has led to their becoming the definitive expression of a design.At the same time, a paradigm shift has been emerging whereby manufacturers and construction companies enter into contracts to take responsibility for the whole lifecycle of their products – in effect, to sell their product as a service rather than as an artefact. This makes necessary not only the preservation of the product’s design, but also its continuing intelligibility,adaptability and reusability throughout the product’s lifecycle.The CAD models themselves, though, are typically in closed formats tied to a particular version of an expensive proprietary application prone to rapid obsolescence. While product lifecycle management (PLM) systems deal with some of the issues arising from this, at present it is not possible to implement acomprehensive curation and preservation architecture for CAD models, let alone the other forms of engineering information. In order to fill in some of the gaps in a possible architecture, we have developed two tools to aid in the curation and preservationof CAD models. The first is a preservation planningtool for CAD models: a Registry/Repository of Representation Information for Engineering (RRoRIfE). The tool uses Representation Information, as defined by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model, to advise on suitable strategies for migrating CAD models to archival or exchange formats. The second – Lightweight Models with Multilayered Annotations (LiMMA) – is an architecture forlayering non-geometric information on top of a geometric model, regardless of the format used for the geometric model. We envision this architecture being used not only to create flexible, lightweight archival representations of model data, but also to facilitate better information flows between a designteam and the rest of the extended enterprise.

This presentation will describe the background of the eCrystals Federation, which is based on eBank foundations, and which, in partnership with OAI-ORE, will implement a federation of open data repositories for crystallography. An application profile, based on the Dublin Core standard, has been developed by the eBank-UK project for the initial construction of a federation of crystallography data repositories. Building on this initial deployment the eCrystals Federation will then work closely with the OAI-ORE team, as part of a wider international consortium funded by Microsoft to support the whole lifecycle of chemistry research data, to develop a more effective protocol for interoperability between data repositories and the construction of tools and third party services based on the data federation.The groundwork to establish a repository network will be described together with the evolving advocacy program, links with third party services such as data centres, publishers, learned societies, and preservation/sustainability activity. Continuing developments in partnership with the Digital Curation Centre are investigating suitable curation strategies, the creation of preservation metadata, and the application of the DRAMBORA Toolkit as a means of self-assessment to the crystallography repositories. Emerging data policy issues for institutions will be explored and some challenges for the future will be presented.

The JISC funded eBank-UK project (two phases since Sept. 2003) [1], has investigated the linking of primary data to other research outputs, such as published papers, within the scholarly knowledge cycle [2]. Building on the concept of open access [3], the project has focussed on the laboratory based experimental technique of chemical crystallography at the UK National Crystallography Centre. It has constructed an institutional data repository (eCrystals) that makes available the raw, derived and results data from a crystallographic experiment [4]. Following the creation of a completed crystal structure, data is uploaded into a data repository and additional metadata (chemical as well as bibliographic) is associated with the dataset. The objectives of eBank-UK: Phase 3 (Sept. 2006–June 2007) [5] aim to progress the establishment of a global federation of data repositories for crystallography: the “eCrystals Federation”, through a comprehensive feasibility scoping study. An important part of the study (this report) explores data curation and preservation issues as well as sustainability within a federation. Long-term sustainability of digital data requires, in the first instance, a policy commitment to undertake curation and preservation duties in maintaining the data so that it is usable (and reusable) for its useful lifetime. However, such a commitment is likely to be influenced by a whole host of factors including social, political, organisational, financial and technical. One way of assessing these factors in the context of the eCrystals data repository and federation is to consider the questions posed in the rapidly developing area of repository audit and certification.Within the preservation community, the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) (ISO 14721:2003 [14]), has established itself as an important standard, influencing: the development of preservation metadata; architectures and systems design of repositories; and conformance criteria for archival repositories. Although the OAIS standard covers a wide range of issues relating to the operating environment of an archive or repository, its concept of using Representation Information (RI) as a means of preserving access to the information content of digital objects is currently receiving significant attention [32, 34, 35]. Consequently, we devote a section to examining the RI of the content held in the eCrystals repository, in particular the variety of file formats in use.Fundamental to preserving and curating digital information, is the recording of adequate and appropriate metadata. Whilst the exact metadata to be recorded is dependent on the specific preservation strategy in force, there is some consensus on a certain core set of preservation metadata (PREMIS Data Dictionary [53]). We therefore examine the implications of this on the eBank-UK Metadata Application Profile [46].The capabilities and constraints of the software platform underlying a repository are critical to the functions and services that can be provided at the application level. With this in mind, we take a brief look at the ePrints.org software upon which the eCrystals data repository is constructed.Given the exploratory nature of this report, we have tried to identify issues that are likely to impact on the long-term preservation, curation, maintenance and sustainability of crystallography data and in particular the eCrystals data repository. In order to progress this work and take it forward in the context of a federation we follow each major topic area with a set of recommendations, some of which have over-lapping scope.

Presented at the JORUM, DCC and JISC Forum on Long-term Curation and Preservation of Learning Objects

An invited presentation given at IPRES 2005

This report is a state-of-the-art overview of activities and research being undertaken in areas relating to semantic interoperability in digital library systems. It has been undertaken as part of the cluster activity of WP5: Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability (KESI). The authors and contributors draw on the research expertise and experience of a number of organisations (UKOLN, ICS-FORTH, NETLAB, TUC-MUSIC, University of Glamorgan) as well as several work-packages (WP5: Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability; WP3: Audio-Visual and Non-traditional Objects) within the DELOS2 NoE. In addition, a workshop was held [KESI Workshop Sept. 2004] (co-located with ECDL 2004) in order to provide a forum for the discussion of issues relevant to the topic of this report. We are grateful to those who participated in the forum and for their valuable comments, which have helped to shape this report. Definitions of interoperability, syntactic interoperability and semantic interoperability are presented noting that semantic interoperability is very much about matching concepts as a basis. The NSF Post Digital Libraries Futures Workshop: Wave of the Future [NSF Workshop] has identified semantic interoperability as being of primary importance in digital library research.

We discuss a system for the digital capture of museum artefacts which are accumulated into a multimedia repository comprising 3D models, images, video and sound clips as well as textual descriptions. A comprehensive set of metadata is recorded and stored alongside these various media with the aim of re-using and re-purposing them for multiple applications. We investigate issues relating to both internal and external interoperability to enable the creation of learning scenarios within the system itself as well as the export of primary multimedia objects into an independent, external Learning Content Management System for the creation of complex Learning Objects.

Presented at WP5 Forum Workshop: Semantic Interoperability in Digital Library Systems, DELOS Network of Excellence in Digital Libraries, Bath, UK, 17th September 2004

An invited presentation to celebrate 25 years of computer graphics at the Media Technology Research Centre, University of Bath

This document identifies various activities currently in progress in the area of providing ontology based services as an input to the work of the agentcities working group oncommunication. The descriptions of the services have been provided by the contacts as indicated.

Presented at Museum Association Conference, MACE 2003

Presented at ARCH-IT Symposium, EVA, London, 23rd July 2003

We describe an innovative system designed for museums to create, manage and present multimedia based representations of museum artefacts in virtual exhibitions both inside and outside museums. Our system creates digital surrogates through a novel stereo photogrammetry system with little user interaction. The resulting 3D objects are refined using state-of-the-art 3D modelling software configured for ease of use by museum staff. A repository of such digital surrogates is managed in an XML enabled relational database and provides the basis for the creation and presentation of virtual museum exhibitions, allowing current museum websites to evolve from a 2D to a 3D multimedia-rich domain. In this paper, we discuss the modelling and refinement processes which are based on stereo photogrammetry and the creation and visualisation of virtual museum exhibitions using virtual and augmented reality techniques.

Presented at Agentcities Information Day 2, Lisbon, 10-11th September 2002

Presented at Ontologies & Communications Working Group Meeting, Agentcities Information Day 2, Lisbon, 10-11th September 2002

Metadata vocabularies, which can be regarded as manifestations of ontologies, provide the critical semantics required for automated information processing. Their representation in a machine processible format is key to the realisation of the SemanticWeb. However for systems to communicate in an open and meaningful manner requires some level of agreement on the concepts and terms to be used. We describe the work of the SCHEMAS project in promoting ontology convergence within domains. One major means of achieving this objective was the development of a knowledge base for metadata vocabularies, also known as a metadata registry.