DataNet Full Proposal: The Data Conservancy (A Digital Research and Curation Virtual Organization)

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AbstractThe Data Conservancy, A Digital Research and Curation Virtual ObservatoryPI: Sayeed Choudhury of Johns Hopkins UniversityJohns Hopkins University (JHU) will create The Data Conservancy (DC), which will research, design, implement, deploy and sustain data curation infrastructure for cross-disciplinary discovery, with an emphasis on observational data. The Data Conservancy project is led by Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for University Libraries at JHU, which has a strong track record for leading the research library community in new directions. The Data Conservancy is creating a new model in which libraries regard digital data as a special collection that must be maintained and served like their other collections. Participating organizations include Cornell University, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Marine Biological Laboratory (Encyclopedia of Life), the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Space Telescope Science Institute, Fedora Commons, Portico, University of Queensland, and Tessella Support Services. Besides defining a new role for research libraries in curating and serving special collections of scientific digital data, expected contributions of the Data Conservancy include* Defining of new educational curricula an other opportunities in data curation; * User centered studies that will help the community and NSF better understand how scientists use, share, and preserve data now and what factors motivate them to or inhibit them from preserving and sharing data.Through collection, preservation and semantic integration of data that are now very difficult to assemble and analyze together, the project is also expected to have transformative impact on the ability of scientists to answer grand challenge questions that are as important to the nation and the world, such as three that relate to the production of greenhouse gases: * What are the current geographical and temporal distributions of the major pools and fluxes in the global carbon cycle? * What are the control and feedback mechanisms - both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic - that determine the dynamics of the carbon cycle? * And what are the dynamics of the carbon-climate-human system into the future, and what points of intervention and windows of opportunity exist for human societies to manage this system?The Data Conservancy begins with data spanning anthropology, applied mathematics, astronomy, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, earth sciences, crop and soil sciences, ornithology, psychology, physics, theoretical and applied mechanics. International partnerships augment this initial collection. Evolutionary development of this collection will be guided by the user centered design process.