Libraries - data centre session at December San Francisco conference!

Rajendra Bose, an erstwhile colleague from the Edinburgh Database group then working on database annotation as part of the DCC research activity, and now at Columbia, brought this opportunity to my attention, and it seems well worth while making more widely known. He writes:

Please consider submitting an abstract to a groundbreaking session involving library - data center collaboration at the 2008 American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting during 15-19 December in San Francisco (http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/): The Library - Data Center Alliance in Earth and Space Sciences

Abstracts to this Session U08 (see below) must be submitted by 10 September 2008 at: http://submissions3.agu.org/submission/entrance.asp

Guest presenters tentatively include:

• Christopher Fox, Director, National Geophysical Data Center, USA (confirmed)
• Carlos Morais-Pires, European Commission eScience initiative (confirmed)
• James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University, USA (confirmed)
• Lucy Nowell, National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure, USA (invited)

Librarians, please note that AGU has just clarified that registration for the annual meeting for librarians will be the same as that for high school teachers. For the upcoming annual meeting in San Francisco December 15-19, 2008, that rate will be $40 for one day and $85 for 2 or more days.

We hope you can join us for this novel session; please contact co-conveners Mark Parsons (parsonsm@nsidc.org) or Rajendra Bose (rbose@columbia.edu) with any questions.

Session U08: The Library - Data Center Alliance in Earth and Space Sciences

Conveners: Mark A. Parsons, National Snow and Ice Data Center, and
Rajendra Bose, Columbia University Center for Digital Research and Scholarship

Description: Preserving, sharing, and understanding the diverse and growing collection of Earth and space science data and information require sustained commitment and diverse expertise. Recent reports from national and international scientific organizations increasingly emphasize professional and collaborative approaches to managing data and information, especially supporting interdisciplinary science. The electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) promotes this professional development and collaboration. In particular, eGY recognizes the conceptual alliance between today's research libraries and scientific data centers, and promotes partnerships, collaboration and even hybrids of these two types of enterprises to meet the Earth science informatics challenge.

Research libraries have a long, sustained, and respected role as curators of Earth science information and knowledge. Yet, in recent decades, scientific data centers have also played an increasingly important role in stewarding Earth science data and information. Libraries seek to extend their expertise to manage new forms of digital publication, including data. Data centers seek to develop sustained, long-term archival systems. It is apparent; the two communities should collaborate to achieve their complementary objectives.

This session aims to bring together members of both the research libraries and the data center communities to survey and compare approaches, philosophies, and long-term strategies for dealing with the problems of managing digital scientific data collections, and invites submissions regarding issues and approaches for archiving, serving, and curating such collections. An emphasis on support of interdisciplinary science is encouraged.