Data Management Working Group

Research Data Storage

Data storage is a growing concern for higher education. In particular, research storage is becoming increasingly important to universities as the digital results of research activities continue to grow exponentially, and as the federal government pushes towards making data from research projects more available. Data that has historically been housed and managed by researchers locally is now moving toward centralized storage environments. As part of this change, skills for metadata creation, archiving, and dataset curation will need to come from collaboration within the larger university community. 

This project aims to provide guidance to institutions looking to make this change. The ECAR Data Management Working Group will focus on what services and governance might be needed as institutions increase their maturity in data management and storage support, starting with an environmental scan to better understand the current data storage environment and to surface common issues and concerns. An initial outcome will report on specific pain points in order to identify the area of greatest concern across multiple audiences, including researchers, librarians, IT staff, etc. Potential future work may include case studies, a maturity index, or best practices.This work is just beginning; contact ECARWG@educause.edu if you'd like to participate. (Start date: spring 2013)