Abstract:

Research digital collections are increasingly complex systems, some of indefinite growth, formed by a diversity of data objects. Some may depend on applications that provide functionalities needed for curation, analysis and interaction. While research is conducted, raw data are transformed during analysis, at the same time as new data is gathered, incorporated into subsequent pipelines, curated, published, and archived. In turn, the technologies on which these collections depend change at a fast pace, while the cycles of funding to upgrade and maintain them are uneven. Supporting the development of long-term preservation of these evolving collections requires rethinking the infrastructure and service models.

From the vantage point of a supercomputing center with state of the art hardware and applications expertise, work supporting diverse types of evolving data collections is examined through an archival lens. Data workflows, explicit and implicit metadata, and the relationship between infrastructure and seamless integration of the research and archiving stages will be discussed. Research applying visual analytics to collections triage will be introduced.

Bio:

Maria Esteva is Research Associate, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Esteva holds a B.S. from the School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires and an M.S.c. in Information Studies, Certificate of Advanced Studies in Preservation Administration, and Ph.D. in Information Science, all from the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2008 she has been involved in several archival informatics projects at TACC, including "A Visual Framework for Large-scale Electronic Records Collections."