The document discusses strategies for sharing valuable data that is currently locked inside systems by using cloud services. It suggests that cloud services can help with discovery of data, promoting use of collections, enabling data mining and visualizations, combining data with other sets, and allowing global access. However, the document cautions that the appropriate cloud service and data format depends on what you want to do with the data, such as storage, collaboration, or combining datasets. The document provides questions to consider when choosing a cloud service, such as why you want to share data, what format it is in, sustainability of the service, and licensing of shared data.

2. Bethan Ruddock @bethanar
MmIT CloudBusting, April 2013

3. You have valuable data that you want to share…
… but it’s locked inside your systems
Image used under CC licence from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdashy/2678539087/

4. Push discovery, help researchers find more stuff,
promote use of your collections, enable cool
things like data mining and visualisations,
combine with other data sets, make the most of
your time and effort, store data in sustainable
formats, allow others to enhance your
data, embed in other sites and catalogues,
enable global access, back-up valuable
data, benchmark & collaborate

5. Image used under a CC licence from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenda-starr/4498078166/

6. Store & protect
Combine multiple data
sets
Images used under CC licence from http://www.flickr.com/photos/austin2179/2327574713/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/streamishmc/3069595776

7. Store & protect
Some cloud services are
designed just for storage
Or for storage and client-
side collaboration
Images used under CC licence from http://www.flickr.com/photos/austin2179/2327574713/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4424552903

8. For others, storage won’t
be the main function
They’ll be designed
to ‘do stuff’ with the
data: combine it
with other datasets;
make it available in
new formats &
interfaces
Store & combine
multiple datasets
Images used under CC licence from http://www.flickr.com/photos/austin2179/2327574713/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/streamishmc/3069595776

9. These services will usually be defined by what they do
with the data.
You might not even think of them as cloud services…

10. The format your data needs to be in will depend
which cloud service you’re sending it to, and what
you want done with that data.
Storage & collaboration services:
Native data format, or whatever you & your
collaborators need to work in
Try to choose compact & sustainable formats
Combination services:
Whatever format the service requires
This will usually be the same as the other data sets, or
transformable/interoperable

11. Check what formats you can export data in.
CSV? SQL text format? HTML? Plain text?
Consider:
What format is most appropriate?
Archive catalogues – EAD?
Library catalogues – MARC? MODS XML?
Linked data – RDF? Dublin Core XML?
Is it interoperable? Consistent? Transformable?
Will it enable the service to meet its aims?
How is it licensed?

12. Image used under CC licence from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonynewell/1463945828/

13. Are there barriers to sharing your data?
Licensing & data ownership
Loss of control
Legal barriers to sharing
No time/resource to output data
What are the risks of sharing?
Lose access to service
Data compromised
What are the risks of not sharing?
Data is isolated in a ‘silo’
Don’t meet sharing/outreach objectives
Only have single, local copy of data

14. When choosing a cloud service:
Why do you want to open your
data to the cloud?
Does this service meet your
needs?
Does it meet your users needs?
Is your data in the right format?
Or can you transform it to be?
Can you get your data out of the
cloud service?
In an appropriate format?
Is the service interoperable? Does the service put a certain
Is the service sustainable? licence on your data?
Who do they share it with?
Image used under a CC licence from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kky/704056791/

15. Image used under CC licence from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/justanotherhuman/5795955558/

16. Pairs of resource descriptions, describing the same
resource using different schemas.
Does one of these schemas describe the resource better
than another?
What aspects of the resource have they described well?
Have they missed aspects, or described them badly?
How interoperable is each description? For humans? For
computers?
What would you need to do to this data to share it with
others?
What purpose do you think each schema would best be
used for?

17. bethan.ruddock@manchester.ac.uk @bethanar
Image used under CC licence from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theilluminated/5386099858/