A story of data won, data lost and data re-found: the realities of ecological data preservation

A story of data won, data lost and data re-found: the realities of ecological data preservation

This paper discusses the process of retrieval and updating legacy data to allow on-line discovery and delivery. There are many pitfalls of institutional and non-institutional ecological data conservation over the long term. Interruptions to custodianship, old media, lost knowledge and the continuous...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biodiversity data journal Vol. 6; no. 6; pp. e28073 - 26
Main Authors: Specht, Alison, Bolton, Matthew P, Kingsford, Bryn, Specht, Raymond L, Belbin, Lee
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers 07-11-2018
Subjects:
Angiospermae
Australasia
Biodiversity
Biodiversity & Conservation
Case studies
Climate change
Conservation
Conservation status
Data collection
data conservation
Data Management
data retrieval
Ecologists
Ecology
ecosystems & natural spaces
Expeditions
Habitats
International standards
legacy data
Magnetic tape
Plantae
Preservation
Software
Terrestrial ecosystems
Vegetation
Australia
data retrieval
legacy data
data conservation
data curation
long-term data accessibility
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Summary:This paper discusses the process of retrieval and updating legacy data to allow on-line discovery and delivery. There are many pitfalls of institutional and non-institutional ecological data conservation over the long term. Interruptions to custodianship, old media, lost knowledge and the continuous evolution of species names makes resurrection of old data challenging. We caution against technological arrogance and emphasise the importance of international standards. We use a case study of a compiled set of continent-wide vegetation survey data for which, although the analyses had been published, the raw data had not. In the original study, publications containing plot data collected from the 1880s onwards had been collected, interpreted, digitised and integrated for the classification of vegetation and analysis of its conservation status across Australia. These compiled data are an extremely valuable national collection that demanded publishing in open, readily accessible online repositories, such as the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (http://www.tern.org.au) and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA: http://www.ala.org.au), the Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF: http://www.gbif.org). It is hoped that the lessons learnt from this project may trigger a sober review of the value of endangered data, the cost of retrieval and the importance of suitable and timely archiving through the vicissitudes of technological change, so the initial unique collection investment enables multiple re-use in perpetuity.
Bibliography:Academic editor: Quentin Groom
ISSN:1314-2828
1314-2836
1314-2828
DOI:10.3897/BDJ.6.e28073