Solving the Global Change Puzzle A U.S. Strategy for Managing Data and Information. (1991) / Chapter Skim
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The Present System
The Present System
Pages 17-27
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The data management system is no longer adequate for current scientific activities, let alone for the unprecedented challenges posed by a global change research program. The following sections summarize some major issues to be addressed if the U.S.
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national data management system involves relatively large national data centers, specialty data centers not necessarily charged with long-term preservation, and many large collections at academic centers. The holdings of most of these centers
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, created in 1987, is an ad hoc voluntary group with senior representatives from the federal agencies involved with data management for global change. The purpose of the IWG is to coordinate interagency data and information management.
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data centers play a major role, is an excellent foundation for international exchange of global change research data. However, the WDC system does not yet include data from several disciplines (e.g., biological data, socioeconomic data, atmospheric chemistry data)
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The national data centers are staffed by dedicated data management professionals who have been limited by decades of second-priority budget status.
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Some centers are perceived as doing a better job than are others of providing data and information for research purposes. Two data centers subjectively viewed as particularly successful by the science community are the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)
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Nevertheless, the NCAR example shows that a data management system can work. It may provide useful input to the design of a much more complex system for global change.
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In addition, a directory with information about data centers must be available. A national data catalog system, the Global Change Master Directory, sponsored by the IWG and based on a similar NASA system, is under development.
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Many data centers have little or no in-house scientific research and therefore are not in a good position to provide effective quality assurance. Sometimes the data management system unwittingly corrupts datasets.
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Evaluations of individual datasets are important for determining which existing ones may be most useful for global change research. The data centers should play important roles in this function.
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With few exceptions the data centers do not now have adequate scientific expertise to perform this function.
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