***Apologies for cross-posting***

Please help us with a SoA funded research project on storing information
in the cloud and complete a survey on storing information in the cloud
here: http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/aber/soacloud


The Department of Information Studies (DIS) at Aberystwyth University is
currently running a research project looking into cloud storage
requirements for information professionals. The project is funded by the
Society of Archivists and the final report will be presented at their
annual conference in September 2010.

The aim of the project is to address some of the issues arising from
storing electronic information in a virtual environment (the cloud) which
is not directly controlled by the originating organisation on their
servers but outside the firewall through an external cloud provider (for a
detailed definition of cloud computing see
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/) .
We aim to produce a set of legal, operational and security related
considerations for information professionals in the form of a toolkit that
should be taken into account when moving data into a cloud environment for
primarily access and computational reason. In order to fully consider the
range of concerns of information professionals about storing data in the
cloud such as the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data and
compliance with access legislation such as DP and FOI, we would like to
consult the community in the form of a short questionnaire. It is outside
the scope of this small project to consider preservation issue of
information stored in the cloud but we hope to look at that area in the
future.

We would be grateful for all information professionals whose organisations
already store information in the cloud or whose organisations are planning
to do so to complete the following questionnaire and maybe agree to be
contacted for further investigation at a later stage. We would also be
grateful, if members of the information profession could forward the
questionnaire to other colleagues in their organisation (legal or IT) who
have responsibility for managing data in the cloud.

This research project is seen as an introductory study that seeks to
provide practitioners with a basis for a more structured discussion of the
impact of cloud computing on records and information management processes
and we are looking for active input from the information community.

The survey is available at http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/aber/soacloud and
will close on 21st March 2010.

Should you have any further questions regarding the research project or
this survey, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Nicole Schulz				        Kirsten Ferguson-Boucher
Teaching Fellow				Lecturer in Archives & Records Mgt
Department of Information Studies	Department of Information Studies
Aberystwyth University			Aberystwyth University
Llanbadarn Fawr				Llanbadarn Fawr
Aberystwyth SY23 3AS			Aberystwyth SY23 3AS
Tel: +44 (0)1970 622151			Tel: +44 (0)1970 622069
Email: [log in to unmask]			Email: [log in to unmask]

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