Scholars and their blogs: characteristics, preferences, and perceptions impacting digital preservation

This descriptive study investigated scholars who blog in the areas of history, economics, law, biology, chemistry and physics, as well as attributes of their respective blogs. It offers an examination of scholars' attitudes and perceptions of their blogs in relation to the system of scholarly communication and their preferences for digital preservation. Further, it investigates blog publishing behaviors and blog characteristics that influence preservation action. Findings are drawn from 153 questionnaires, 24 interviews, and content analysis of 93 blogs. Most feel their respective blogs are representative of their cumulative scholarly record. A majority see their blogging as benefitting several aspects of their scholarly lives, contributing to a sense of improvement in their teaching, writing, and research activities, as well as in communications with peers. It was found that scholars who blog are generally interested in blog preservation with a strong sense of personal responsibility. Most feel their blogs should be preserved for both personal and public access and use into the indefinite, rather than short-term, future. Scholars who blog identify themselves as most responsible for blog preservation. Concerning capability, scholars perceive blog service providers, hosts, and networks as most capable. National and institutional-based libraries and archives, as well as institutional IT departments, are perceived as least responsible and capable for preservation of scholars' respective blogs. Although over half of questionnaire respondents save their blog content, in whole or in part, and many interviewees expressed a sophisticated understanding of issues of digital preservation, the findings also indicate that bloggers exhibit behaviors and preferences complicating digital preservation action, including issues related to rights and use, co-producer dependencies, and content integrity. For example, most use a blog publishing application and hosting service, many report editing and deleting of blog posts after publication, and less than half of blogs feature explicit rights and use statements

The Data Life Aquatic

   This paper assesses data consumers’ perspectives on the interoperable and re-usable aspects of the FAIR Data Principles. Taking a domain-specific informatics approach, ten oceanographers were asked to think of a recent search for data and describe their process of discovery, evaluation, and use. The interview schedule, derived from the FAIR Data Principles, included questions about the interoperability and re-usability of data. Through this critical incident technique, findings on data interoperability and re-usability give data curators valuable insights into how real-world users access, evaluate, and use data. Results from this study show that oceanographers utilize tools that make re-use simple, with interoperability seamless within the systems used. The processes employed by oceanographers present a good baseline for other domains adopting the FAIR Data Principles.&nbsp