The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a document describing some considerations surrounding the efforts needed by research libraries to support what has come to be called ” E-science”, which is a convenient label for the transformation of scientific investigation through the application of computation methods of data storage and manipulation. One of the main effects of this application is the production of data in vast amounts, quantities so great as to overwhelm currently existing techniques for keeping and accessing this material later. Moreover, mere preservation is only one part of the larger question. Increasingly, researchers want not merely to preserve the data generated in their investigations, but to use it again and again, under different experimental conditions and with different instrumentation. So, it is all starting to add up to a very large problem. The ARL people are thinking about this and have released what is hoped to be a beginning in the elucidation of research library roles in the attempt to resolve this question.
ARL