Project Information

The Data-at-Risk Initiative (DARI) is a project of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) Data at Risk Task Group (DARTG) to create an inventory of valuable scientific data that are at risk of being lost to posterity. Examples of at-risk data include analog formats, such as loose paper documents, laboratory notebooks, photographs or glass plates, digital data stored in obsolete and deteriorating formats such as magnetic tapes or floppy disks, or any formats that face disposal due to inadequate storage. The DARI is not a repository for data. It is a descriptive inventory of endangered data that is held by others: individuals and research institutions. Our goal is for the DARI to be an initial step in identifying and locating at-risk-data.

We are currently developing a prototype inventory using Omeka, an open source software package for online collections. Using this prototype, SILS students, in conjunction with DARTG, conducted an initial case study wherein scientists contributed dataset descriptions directly to the inventory through an online form.