Case Studies
Home > Resource Centre > Case Studies
Internal | External
Our case studies offer examples of best digital curation practice among our stakeholder communities and identify areas where guidance, tools, and further research are required.
Internal
The following DCC case studies are available:
- SCARP Case Study No. 6 - Digital Curation approaches for Architecture
30 October 2009 | Colin Neilson
This study highlights choice in how to provide for appropriate care of digital objects, choice in digital curation treatments, as a means of promoting more effective current and future architectural practice and research. The digital assets produced by use of digital tools and from digital methods of working in the teaching, learning, research and practice of Architecture require appropriate curation treatment if the full value of the assets is to be realised. - SCARP Case Study No. 5 - Roles and Reusability of Video Data in Social Studies of Interaction
18 October 2009 | Angus Whyte
The study reviews the curation landscape in several interdisciplinary fields that use video analysis in studies of human interaction. A 5 page Summary and Conclusions [PDF, 136KB] is also available. The study primarily focuses on uses of video in ethnographic studies and in eye movement research, and is based on interviews and field study. - SCARP Case Study No. 4 - Curated Databases in the Life Sciences: The Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project
12 July 2009 | Elizabeth Fairley
This study scopes and assesses the data curation aspects of the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project (EMAP), a programme funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The principal goal for EMAP is to develop an expression summary for each gene in the mouse embryo, which collectively has been named the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Gene-Expression Database (EMAGE). - SCARP Case Study No. 3 - Clinical Data from Home to Health Centre: the Telehealth Curation Lifecycle
28 June 2009 | Tasneem Irshad, Jenny Ure
This study looks at the data curation lifecycle in Telehealth research. Telehealth, or telecare, is an emerging sub-domain of eHealth, and the report profiles current practices in several telehealth pilot projects. Data curation is at an embryonic stage but can draw on related eHealth initiatives and clinical data management practices, and the report considers the infrastructure needed for data curation in this field of research and practice. - SCARP Case Study No. 2 - Curating Atmospheric Data for long term use: Infrastructure and Preservation Issues for the Atmospheric Sciences community
1 June 2009 | Esther Conway
This study engaged with a number of archives, including the British Atmospheric Data Centre, the World Data Centre Archive at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association (EISCAT). We developed a preservation analysis methodology capable of identifying and drawing out discipline specific preservation requirements and issues. We present the methodology along with its application to the Mesospheric Stratospheric Tropospheric (MST) radar dataset, which is currently supported by and accessed through the British Atmospheric Data Centre. We suggest strategies for the long-term preservation of the MST data and make recommendations for the wider community. - CARMEN (Code, Analysis, Repository and Modelling for e-Neuroscience)
28 November 2008 | Graham Pryor - SCARP Case Study No. 1 - Curating Brain Images in a Psychiatric Research Group: Infrastructure and Preservation Issues
14 November 2008 | Angus Whyte
This study involved the Neuroimaging Group in University of Edinburgh's Division of Psychiatry. It combined an assessment of risks to the long-term value of the research group's datasets with field work to understand current data practices in their context. A 5-page Summary and Recommendations [PDF, 170KB] is available. An annex Neuroimaging Data Landscapes [PDF, 1.23MB] provides background on the development of imaging, the nature of the data collected for neuroimaging studies in psychiatry, data repository and curation resources available, and legal and ethical constraints on data exchange. - Integrative Biology
6 April 2008 | Martin Donnelly, Victoria Boyd, and Jill Spellman
Computer simulation organ functions based on models offers the potential to increase researchers' understanding of the causes of medical conditions such as heart disease and to work towards developing new drugs and treatments to combat these illnesses. The main aim of the Integrative Biology (IB) project is to realise this potential by developing multi-scale models - spanning the range from genes to whole organs - and to provide data management features for its disparate users including the sharing of data in a secure infrastructure, and enabling the storage and re-use of simulation outputs. - PrestoSpace
19 March 2008 | Martin Donnelly, Victoria Boyd, and Jill Spellman
Explicit strategies are needed to manage 'mixed' audio visual (AV) archives that contain both analogue and digital materials. The PrestoSpace Project brings together industry leaders, research institutes, and other stakeholders at a European level, to provide products and services for effective automated preservation and access solutions for diverse AV collections. The Project's main objective is to develop and promote flexible, integrated and affordable services for AV preservation, restoration, and storage with a view to enabling migration to digital formats in AV archives. - JHOVE
4 April 2006 | Martin Donnelly
Accurate file format information is crucial for preserving access to and the rendering of digital information over time. As such, it is vital that when a digital object is deposited in a repository, the object in question is of the type it purports to be. However, the representation of file formats is easily corruptible - whether accidental or intentional. This is of particular concern to institutions with an interest in preserving digital materials in repositories. The JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment (JHOVE) is an Open Source, extensible framework for the format-specific identification, validation, and characterisation of digital objects. - Wide Field Astronomy Unit
8 December 2005 | Martin Donnelly
The Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) creates and curates astronomical data, serving a large community of data re-users. Linking its databases with the nascent Virtual Observatory, WFAU collections are made available to the entire community. Regular curation tasks include loading catalogues into a database, matching them with prior observations, preparing data for publication via a web interface, and occasional recalibration and replacement. The data products extracted from the WFAU archives are mostly held in the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format. The set of keywords used in FITS metadata records is defined only by weak constraints, not by a controlled list. As a result, records can be difficult to interpret beyond the institution which generated them, creating potential problems for data centres which ingest quantities of externally created data.
External
The following external case studies are available:
Further case studies will be published over the course of the DCC project. For more in-depth information on digital curation issues, please see our DCC Digital Curation Manual.
