19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Data Archiving - The InterPARES Project

Space Science Data Archive Case Study

William E. Underwood (william.underwood@gtri.gatech.edu)
Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

The Chain of Preservation Model is a model of the activities and information needed for records creation and maintenance, records appraisal, and archival preservation. It provides a generic preservation framework that can be used by archival institutions to develop their own preservation strategies depending on their institutional requirements and the specific bodies of records they must preserve. However, it needs to be demonstrated that this general preservation model applies in specific cases. A walkthrough of an activity model is one way of reviewing a model in order to validate or falsify it. This paper discusses a case study of a space science data archive that was designed to collect information that was needed for a walkthrough of the model. This information includes the kinds of digital scientific data in the archives, the kinds of metadata maintained, and the preservation activities. The concepts of reliability, accuracy, and authenticity as used by data archivists and space scientists are discussed. The preservation strategy used by the data archives, for example, standard data formats and conversion procedures, is discussed. Finally, the results of the walkthrough are summarized.