Cairo

Project CAiRO

Curating Artistic Research Output

Stephen Gray

[email protected]

Part of JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) Training Materials programme

1-year projects to help researchers make research data with a longer ‘shelf-life’

All projects will create post graduate teaching modules to be made available at http://open.jorum.ac.uk

CAiRO is only one with a solely creative arts focus and is a partnership between JISC Digital Media, UOB Drama Dept., DCC

Background

In the 'hard' sciences

Research data often equates to 'datasets' of primary or secondary research (i.e. textual data).

Research outputs usually means a peer reviewed & published journal article.

In the creative arts

Research data might be an event, exhibition, performance, physical object, an image, a video recording, an audio recording, a script, or a score (plus datasets of primary or secondary research).

Research outputs may be any of the above (or a peer reviewed & published journal article).

What is research data?

Q. Once completed, what do people use arts research data for?

(From Cairo User Needs Analysis 2010)

• To help indirectly in a research process

• To help directly in a research process (e.g. re-staging)

• As discussed exemplars for teaching

• To help teaching in a general way (e.g. for illustration)

• For personal interest

Why keep it?

Q. Top three reasons to manage arts data? (From Cairo User Needs Analysis 2010)

 1/ To maximise the impact and reuse potential of publicly funded research.

2/ To facilitate the personal re-use or re-exhibition of work at a later date.

3/ To improved the chances of further project funding*.

*i.e. because the AHRC tell us to

Why keep it?

.

“Let's do it!”

Emotional simulation 66% joy by FaceGen

“Digital objects break. They are bound to the specific application

packages (or hardware) used to create them.

They are prone to corruption. They are easily misidentified.

They are generally poorly described.”

(Seamus Ross, Digital Preservation, Archival Science and

Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries ECDL, 2007)

However...

Q. Is there sufficient institutional help

to help researchers manage data?

(From Cairo User Needs Analysis 2010)

However...

62.5%said ‘No’

However...

There's no national subject centre

for creative arts research data

...

Where data is retained:

– Some collections are not represented digitally– Some digital collections are offline– Copyright may not be cleared for reuse– File formats used can limit sharing/reuse– Accompanying information (metadata) can limit

sharing/reuse

However...

.

“Oh no!”

Emotional simulation 55% disappointment by FaceGen

There's research data management.

“A series of actions undertaken to ensure evidence of research survives in a useful form and achieves

maximum impact.”

But wait...

Advice on research data management for the creative arts available this summer from http://open.jorum.ac.uk:

Unit 1: An introduction to research data management

Unit 2: Planning to manage research data

Unit 3: Creating 'preservable' research

Unit 4: Selecting and normalising research data

CAiRO Module v1

CAiRO Unit 1: An introduction to research data management

- Evidencing practice-as-research ("what's my research data?")

- Threats to research data

- Benefits of retaining research data

- Roles and responsibilities when managing arts data

- Arts data management cycle

Unit 1's

Don’t have only 1 copy of data or use only 1 type of data storage!

Home produced DVD/CD. Vulnerable to: rot, cracking due to centrifugal force. Strong light

can reduce lifespan to 100 hours! Average lifespan = c. 6 years

Mechanical hard drives. Magnetic surges can alter data on the media, prone to mechanical

and/or electronic failure. “There are only two types of hard drives, those that are dead and

those that are dying” (Jason D. O'Grady, technologist). Average lifespan = c. 5 years

Solid state drives. Largely unknown and the source of debate. Some say overwriting

becomes less efficient every time with major errors occurring after 100, 000 rewrites. Intel

say “at least 5 years” under moderate to heavy use.

Info from the Image Permanence Institute & National Institute of Standards and Technology

CAiRO Unit 2: Planning to manage research data

- Deciding who will use your data and for what

- Data management and funding bodies (AHRC's Technical Appendix)

- Finding a home for your data

- Writing a Preservation Plan

- Case study: Arts data in The University of the West of England's

repository

Unit 2's

• Seeks “universal access to all knowledge”

• No upload limit

• Standardises metadata for you

• All common file types accepted

Need a home for your data? Consider The Internet Archive(www.archive.org)

CAiRO Unit 3: Creating 'preservable' research

- Documenting practice-as-research

- Copyright and legislation (Ownership, Creative Commons, Public

Domain, Model Release & Data Protection)

- Metadata (inc. Keywords & File naming)

- Hardware for storing data

Unit 3's

Need some legal advice? Contact JISC Legal (http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/)

• Free helpdesk for UK’s research community

• [email protected] or call 0141 548 4939

• Offer tailored (& free!) legal advice

• Experts on copyright & IPR

• Run seminars & training days

CAiRO Unit 4: Selecting and normalising research data

- Deciding what should be kept long-term

- Deciding in what form it should be kept (e.g. significant properties)

- Normalising data (e.g. error checking, cleaning, reducing formats)

- Selecting file formats (e.g. open vs. proprietary)

- Long-term management (e.g. data migration)

Unit 4's

Problems selecting a file type from the estimated 300k available?

Search with PRONOM (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM)

• Tells you which formats are ‘endangered’

• Tells you which formats are 'open'

• Still in development so be kind

• Use for justifying choices (i.e. AHRC apps)

Work has begun with educationlist to author visually stunning

(or at least interesting) teaching materials.

CAiRO NEEDS YOU! Case studies required: positive (or negative)

experiences of keeping (or losing) arts research data.

Could be in a repository/online collection or a personal archive.

5-day Bristol summer school in June to trial all CAiRO materials.

CAiRO Module v2?

?

Project CAiRO

Stephen Gray

[email protected]