Should We Keep Everything Forever? Determining Long-Term Value of Research Data

Wisdom from the Archives Community The archives profession has a long tradition of appraising and assessing the enduring value of records, and the University of Illinois Archives has a long history of appraising scientific and technological records. The idea that not every record can/should be preserved underlies archival appraisal [2,3] and digital preservation [4,5] processes. Archivists recognize the different contexts and factors that affect notions of value, retention, and long-term preservation of records. For data, concepts such as research impact, uniqueness, future utility, documentation, and use/citation, are important appraisal considerations [2,5,6,7], as are the technical characteristics of digital objects [4,6,7]. We have drawn from archival theory and practice and emerging data curation practice to create preservation review guidelines for the Illinois Data Bank.