DESIGN OF THE NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY’S DATA REPOSITORY AND DATA MANAGEMENT SERVICES

The US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library (NAL) has a historical mandate to procure and preserve information concerning agriculture including the results of scientific experiments. Recently initiated projects include the Ag Data Commons and information management for the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network. The Ag Data Commons is a general catalog and repository for agricultural research data which can promote effective discovery of and add value to often widely distributed and seemingly disparate datasets. Ag Data Commons makes a special effort to link to PubAg, NAL's growing repository of open agricultural literature, and to leverage its tools. The LTAR project addresses the full data life cycle for data from 18 research locations with an average of 50 years of historical data. The initial emphasis for the LTAR data project is on geoscientific data including hydrology, meteorology, and biogeochemistry.

Specific system design objectives include creating an effective user interface for both data providers and as well as people searching for data, robust descriptive information (metadata) to allow re-use of the data for unanticipated purposes in the future, and enhancing the ease of providers receiving appropriate citations and credit when their data is re-used. Design details include data format recommendations, adoptions of standards, and application of multiple controlled keyword vocabularies to promote interdisciplinary access.