DATA PRESERVATION LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY

Many scientists involved in data management, data preservation, and sample repositories did not begin with a career plan or education for these future responsibilities. With little or no formal training, these tasks are often learned through trial and error. A better educational method is to learn through the experiences of others involved in similar tasks. To that end, lessons learned through involvement with geochemical sample and data collection programs, the National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) geochemistry database reformatting task, the USGS National Geochemical Database project, and the USGS National Geochemical Sample Archive will be presented.

These lessons can be expressed as ten aphorisms. (1) Data management is more than preserving digital data. (2) Begin a data management plan at the beginning of each project. (3) Be consistent. (4) Be flexible. (5) The future will be different. (6) Data quality starts on day one. (7) Data quality is everyone’s responsibility. (8) Data cleanup takes a lot longer than you might think. (9) Technology will change, so must your data management plan. (10) Learn from other people’s mistakes or experiences.