UKEDC: Why Preserve? Thoughts from the EDC team for World Preservation Day on 6th November

The UKERC Energy Data Centre team contemplates

The Energy Data Centre's vision is Access to energy information for now and the future, so its purpose is to preserve the research data and grey literature that is deposited within the service. The team are usually busy doing preservation activities rather than thinking deep thoughts. However, this World Preservation Day's theme gave us an opportunity to take a wider view of our roles.

Our EDC team has four members who cover a range of career stages, team roles with different perspectives, and personal experiences of the digital world. Each of our team members has answered the Why Preserve question in their own words.

"I think preservation is important because of its links to reusability when it comes to research. Not only does preserving research data for reuse promote collaboration, but it has the potential to increase efficiency and lower project costs by not requiring redundant research to be carried out if it has previously been completed. Data can be lost or made inaccessible for numerous reasons, such as a project that has conducted a study coming to the end of its lifecycle, which means that preserving information on research and results is key to being able to build up large libraries of potentially useful information that can be used in further research beyond its intended scope." - Oliver, Graduate Data Steward.

"Preserving things, especially energy information, is vital because it helps us learn from the past, optimise the present, and plan for a more sustainable future. When we retain and understand energy data, we can make smarter decisions about resource use, reduce waste, and accelerate the transition to cleaner technologies." - Peter, Technical Lead

"With the content on the internet becoming broader as time goes on, it is important to have systems in place that can facilitate the storage of files, so we do not lose any important work, such as energy research." - Vivek, Graduate Research Software Engineer

"Preservation ensures that important and relevant digital knowledge is kept safely, securely, and with context, so it isn't a meaningless digital object. This takes time, effort, professional skills, and computing resources. We do this so that the knowledge held in the digital object can be used by others, maybe in ways we can't imagine, to further energy research and to improve the way we all live- for now and the future." - Catherine, EDC Service Lead

While we all have our own perspectives, it is clear that outputs of energy research have the potential to change the world and preserving this knowledge is an important part of the knowledge landscape, answering the Why Preserve? question for the EDC service and our communities.

Content that we are responsible for preserving at the Energy Data Centre can be explored from the EDC Portal