Data of Unusual Size: A Policy Framework Investigation

Over the last several years, many academic libraries have engaged in institution-wide outreach efforts promoting the value of research data management and the importance of data archiving and sharing. A happy result of this work is that PIs leading research projects that are concluding are now bringing data archiving requests for well-managed research data directly to libraries. But much of this data has the potential to consume hundreds of terabytes of storage space – some from individual projects alone. These storage-hungry datasets require development in software, hardware, policy, and service so that these large digital treasures can be archived according to academic library commitments to strong data stewardship. We conducted an environmental review of select mature large-filesize data archiving services to identify services offered to research. We will share practices and policies for data archiving and an overview of the more challenging large data archiving scenarios facing academic libraries.