SAVING EVERYTHING IS NOT AN OPTION

Our organizations expend significant resources on creating scientific and technical data, but we generally spend much less on the long-term management, preservation, and access to those data. Projects end, new initiatives arrive, budgets are strained, and experienced staff leaves. The result is that many of our important data sets may become inaccessible. How can we take steps to preserve the important data? What are the ‘important' data? Conducting science reviews to determine where resources should be allocated is one approach that can serve a critical function in determining what data to save and what data to dispense with. It is easy to have a ‘save everything' mentality, believing that technology will solve our problems, but this is irresponsible and unrealistic. A better approach is one that compiles the facts of a data set, engages scientists for their first-hand experience, obtains management concurrence on whether to preserve or not, and documents the process, so that decisions made now will be understood many years in the future. This presentation describes a review process that has been implemented for three years, and describes the development of a tool endorsed by the U.S. national archives and records administration and the library and archives of Canada.