Love Your Data Week, Day 5: Rescuing Unloved Data

How do data become unloved?  We data users don’t love data that are messy, poorly documented, incomplete, or unwieldy, to name just a few frustrations.  However, one important way that data become unloved is that they are just plain old.  Older data tend not to be machine-readable, which can pretty much be the kiss of death.  Digitization, while it’s improving, is still somewhat labor-intensive and costly, and so unless a data set is obviously worth the trouble, it may languish. However, researchers are starting to explore whether there may be some hidden gems worth rescuing.  One area in which this is happening is climate data, and a great example is the Glacier Photograph Collection from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).  Before this collection was digitized, users had to travel to the NSIDC in Colorado, ask staff to find physical images or microfilm for them in the collection, and then deal with those physical artefacts.  Not surprisingly, the collection had few users.  However, digitizing these photographs (which can be considered data sources, as they contain information that can be analyzed) has made them not only accessible, but an important resource for documenting changes in glacier size and coverage.  Digitizing some of the old photographs also suggests locations for repeat photographs from the same vantage point, which can indicate changes across time periods. PHOTO: Left: William O. Field, 1941; Right: Bruce F. Molnia, 2004. Muir Glacier...
Source: Dragonfly - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: News From NN/LM PNR Source Type: news