Data management contributes to the growth of local data infrastructure supporting collaborative research in the natural sciences. An important first step in local data management is the process of data assembly. Providing access by a consortium of researchers to assembled data requires planning with two timeframes in mind. In the short-term, support for data aggregation and access at the local site is a high priority. For the long-term, planning toward processes and procedures that support data migration to new technologies as well as to established data repositories is critical. Differing approaches to data storage, organization, and metadata provide examples of multi-temporal planning. A comparison is made between use of file systems and relational databases for heterogeneous field data. Best practices in data management planning will be used to show the weaknesses and strengths of each method.National Science Foundation (NSF DEB, Rapid Grant# 1347077) and Institute of Museum and Library Services Data Curation Education in Research Centers (IMLS/DCERC, Award# RE-02-10-0004-10)Ope
