EAGER: Knowledge and Data Transfer: the Formation of a New Workforce

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This is an EAGER proposal to support 2 graduate students in research which responds to an immediate need concerning critical questions focused on transferring, managing, and the organizational issues of large digital datasets. The basis of the project capitalizes on a very important event: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) scientific dataset is being transferred from one repository to two others, from a national laboratory to a university library and also to a university-based group of astronomers - from one kind of workforce to two others. This is a pivotal moment to study in the organization of digital knowledge in astronomy and how that knowledge will be developed. The transfer of the database between the three workforces, although highly planned, will face multiple strategic difficulties that will require members of all workforces to develop a new form of knowledge at the interface of their different practices. Those who become adept at this interface of knowledge and data transfer will possess knowledge crucial to the designers of data repositories and those who make use of them. Understanding changes, organizational structures, identifying differences and managing cultural and technical issues can be extremely informative to proposed approaches in the cross-disciplinary/cross-workforce science of the future.