A Joint Workshop with the Digital Preservation Coalition and the UK Data Service
Free for DPC members and ESRC Big Data Network centres
 
The DPC and UK Data Service invite you to join our Briefing Day on Preserving Transactional Data—data that result from single, logical interactions with a database. From energy usage to student enrolment, routinely collected data present a valuable resource for research and analysis. The Briefing Day will bring together practitioners who work with transactional data across multiple sectors, including data science, archives, libraries, and academic research. The Briefing Day will also introduce the Technology Watch Report developed through a 15-month study in support of the ESRC’s ‘Big Data Network’ programme. The Briefing Day and report provide an overview of maintaining transactional data for long-term access and the accompanying challenges posed by forms of big data.
 
Transactional data, whether created by interactions between government database systems and citizens or by automatic sensors or machines, hold potential for future developments in academic research and consumer analytics. Reliable transactional data has the power to improve services and investments by organisations in many different sectors. For some forms of data, value accumulates over time, creating the conditions for longitudinal analysis; and conditions for relatively short lived data to offer reproducible results. To release their true value, such data sets need to be effectively curated and preserved.  
 
The Briefing Day will feature a range of case studies to represent management and preservation strategies based on end user needs and regulatory frameworks. The evolving technologies and systems that generate transactional data introduce new questions about how to approach digital preservation. The speakers at this Briefing Day will address emerging trends in the development of new approaches to preserving digital objects as more than ‘just data’.  
 
Sara Day Thomson, author of the Technology Watch report, will open the day-long workshop and discuss the outcomes of the study on Preserving Transactional Data. She will address issues from the challenges of legal regulations to solutions provided by database management. The workshop will feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds to discuss the challenges posed by transactional in their sector and share their experiences capturing, preserving, and using archived transactional data.
 
Topics Will Include...

Who Should Attend?
Practitioners of data archiving, curators or managers of research data, digital preservation specialists, data-driven researchers, data scientists interested in the curation of transactional data, information professionals interested in new developments in digital preservation, and anyone interested in archiving new forms of digital content.

Draft Programme
09.30 Registration, Tea, & Coffee
10.00 Briefing Day Open & Introductions by William Kilbride, DPC
10.15 Key Note ‘Preserving Transactional Data: a Technology Watch report’ by Sara Day Thomson, DPC
11.00 Infrastructure & Services to Facilitate Re-use of Transactional Data in Research
11.30 Linking Transactional Data from Different Sources: a case study
12.00 Curating Big Data for Research Access: a case study
12.30 Networking Lunch
13.30 Broad Strokes and Emerging Trends: a reflection on preservation approaches and big data
14.00 Database Management and Preservation
14.30 Technologies and Tools for the Preservation of Transactional Data
15.00 Tea & Coffee
15.15 Panel Discussion with Speakers
15.50 Closing Remarks
16.00 Thanks and Close

All the best,

Sara

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