Oral presentations (O) Abstract: S15/O01 eAntarctica: From data management to information portals

• Main Author: Belbin L
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.196.6015; http://www.scar28.org/SCAR/SCARmeeting/Tuesday/PDF/S_15_oral.pdf

Scientific research is driven by data. Data is valued by the scientific community for its ability to prove or disprove hypotheses. Data can be valued independently by the cost of collection and processing; Antarctic data is extremely expensive. It is therefore anomalous, that up to the last decade, little thought has been given to preserving these data in a form that facilitates discovery and effective use in perpetuity. The development of the Internet and subsequent development of the World Wide Web have initiated one of the most significant technical, social and intellectual revolutions in modern culture. Until the Internet, the repository of information was the library. One had to physically get to a library, then use either the subject or author catalogues to find relevant information. A successful search required physically locating the material then hoping that the information sought was accessible. In 2004, you can search a volume of freely available information from your desk in a way that would have stunned anyone twenty years ago. Those aged over fifty may suggest that there is too much irrelevant information out there for the Internet to be helpful. That may have been true as little as five years ago, but it is not true any longer. Web search engines such as Google ™ and Yahoo ® work. Results from these engines over the past few years continue to stagger me with their speed and