How Much Is Enough: Metadata for Preserving Digital Data

Developments in digital archival practice are an important consideration when dealing with digital data, given their archival nature and the growing effort to preserve data as evidence, support research and publication, and promote data reuse. The research community can benefit from the work of the archives community to achieve their shared goal of preserving authentic digital data over time and across domains. In this paper, I introduce developments in scientific use of digital data; I then offer an archival perspective on aspects of the core metadata issues that have engaged much of the attention of information management specialists in the last decade. In particular I focus on the similarities between metadata for recordkeeping and metadata for preservation. The paper provides insight into how these two aspects of metadata tie together not only in a general sense, but with regard to the implications for the challenges being faced in many repositories and related initiatives seeking to preserve data as records of their time and for replication and reuse in new contexts. The points of the argument are summarized and the need is reiterated for scientific researchers to work closely with archivists when designing and developing data preservation strategies.