Presentation given by Stephen Gray at the 'Managing Performance Data and Documentation' seminar in Glasgow on Thursday 17th February 2011

1. Project CAiRO Curating Artistic Research Output Stephen Gray [email_address]

2. Part of JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) Training Materials programme 1-year projects to help researchers make research data with a longer ‘shelf-life’ All projects will create post graduate teaching modules to be made available at http://open.jorum.ac.uk CAiRO is only one with a solely creative arts focus and is a partnership between JISC Digital Media, UOB Drama Dept., DCC Background

3. In the 'hard' sciences Research data often equates to 'datasets' of primary or secondary research (i.e. textual data). Research outputs usually mean s a peer reviewed & published journal article. In the creative arts Research data might be an event, exhibition, performance, physical object, an image, a video recording, an audio recording, a script, or a score (plus datasets of primary or secondary research). Research outputs may be any of the above (or a peer reviewed & published journal article). What is research data?

5. Q . Top three reasons to manage arts data? (From Cairo User Needs Analysis 2010) 1/ To maximise the impact and reuse potential of publicly funded research. 2/ To facilitate the personal re-use or re-exhibition of work at a later date. 3/ To improved the chances of further project funding*. *i.e. because the AHRC tell us to Why keep it?

6. . “ Let's do it!” Emotional simulation 66% joy by FaceGen

7. “ Digital objects break. They are bound to the specific application packages (or hardware) used to create them. They are prone to corruption. They are easily misidentified. They are generally poorly described.” (Seamus Ross, Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries ECDL, 2007) However...

8. Q . Is there sufficient institutional help to help researchers manage data? (From Cairo User Needs Analysis 2010) However... 62.5% said ‘No’

9. However... There's no national subject c entre for creative arts research data ...

11. . “ Oh no!” Emotional simulation 55% disappointment by FaceGen

12. There's research data management. “ A series of actions undertaken to ensure evidence of research survives in a useful form and achieves maximum impact.” But wait...

13. Advice on research data management for the creative arts available this summer from http://open.jorum.ac.uk: Unit 1 : An introduction to research data management Unit 2 : Planning to manage research data Unit 3 : Creating 'preservable' research Unit 4 : Selecting and normalising research data CAiRO Module v1

15. Unit 1's Don’t have only 1 copy of data or use only 1 type of data storage! Home produced DVD/CD . Vulnerable to: rot, cracking due to centrifugal force. Strong light can reduce lifespan to 100 hours! Average lifespan = c. 6 years Mechanical hard drives . Magnetic surges can alter data on the media, prone to mechanical and/or electronic failure. “There are only two types of hard drives, those that are dead and those that are dying” (Jason D. O'Grady, technologist). Average lifespan = c. 5 years Solid state drives . Largely unknown and the source of debate. Some say overwriting becomes less efficient every time with major errors occurring after 100, 000 rewrites. Intel say “at least 5 years” under moderate to heavy use . Info from the Image Permanence Institute & National Institute of Standards and Technology

22. Work has begun with educationlist to author visually stunning (or at least interesting) teaching materials. CAiRO NEEDS YOU! Case studies required: positive (or negative) experiences of keeping (or losing) arts research data. Could be in a repository/online collection or a personal archive. 5-day Bristol summer school in June to trial all CAiRO materials. CAiRO Module v2?

23. ? Project CAiRO Stephen Gray [email_address]