Preserving Transactional Data Report now publicly available

Charles Beagrie Ltd, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), and the UK Data Service are delighted to announce the public release of the latest DPC Technology Watch Report ‘Preserving Transactional Data’ by the DPC’s Sara Day Thomson. This report is peer-reviewed and available on open access. It tackles the requirements for preserving transactional data and the accompanying challenges facing companies and institutions that aim to re-use these data for analysis or research, presenting the issues and strategies which emphasize preservation practices that facilitate re-use and reproducibility.

This newest addition to the popular Technology Watch Series was commissioned by the UK Data Service with sponsorship from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of their Big Data Network Support initiative.

‘The scale and velocity of data is pushing current methods and tools for preserving databases to their limits.’ explains author Sara Day Thomson. ‘These data – from government data to environmental data – possess significant characteristics that require much wider approaches to preservation.’

The report identifies a number of these approaches which consider an emergence of new uses for archived forms of these data. Through a range of use cases – examples of transactional data – the report describes the characteristics and difficulties of these ‘big’ data for long-term access.

Neil Beagrie, managing editor of the Technology Watch Report series on behalf of the DPC, added that the paper ‘looks at overarching trends to demonstrate potential solutions for maintaining these data in a secure environment based on end user needs and regulatory frameworks. It should be of huge interest to DPC members, and particularly those working within the business community under regulatory constraints.’

Download ‘Preserving Transactional Data’ now at http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr16-02

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