Packaging Research Data for Long-Term Preservation

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) partnered with UT Libraries in 2016 to prepare an initial deposit of research data into the Digital Preservation Network (DPN). TACC's use case for DPN presented interesting considerations for data selection, description, packaging and recordkeeping due to the size and complex nature of the datasets themselves, and because data arising from TACC’s grant-funded projects change custody according to award lifecycles, while DPN is designed to last “beyond the life spans of individuals, technological systems, and organizations.” This presentation will report on the approach taken to preparing datasets for understandability and usefulness in the long term and the strategy devised to manage ownership of deposited data over time.