Digital libraries for scientific data discovery and reuse: From vision to practical reality

Science and technology research is becoming not only more distributed and collaborative, but more highly instrumented. Digital libraries provide a means to capture, manage, and access the data deluge that results from these research enterprises. We have conducted research on data practices and participated in developing data management services for the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing since its founding in 2002 as a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. Over the course of eight years, our digital library strategy has shifted dramatically in response to changing technologies, practices, and policies. We report on the development of several DL systems and on the lessons learned, which include the difficulty of anticipating data requirements from nascent technologies, building systems for highly diverse work practices and data types, the need to bind together multiple single-purpose systems, the lack of incentives to manage and share data, the complementary nature of research and development in understanding practices, and sustainability.