From Ocean Teacher Library
Hard Copy FormatsContents |
Background
It's been estimated that about half of all the marine data ever collected is still on paper, and may never be digitized for management, analysis or publication. Surprisingly, this surely includes data that also appears even today in journals, books and "grey literature" if there is no separate digital database. Many scientists and institutions still work only on paper, and the mountains of historical data in their possession are not actively being converted to electronic formats. Holdings range from ancient, leather-bound cruise reports to log books still kept onboard, lab sheets stuffed in dusty drawers, and (as one of our favorite ODINAFRICA students put it) "dark and spooky rooms piled high with papers."
Data Archeology and Rescue
International programs to rescue data from these situations exist. The marine data initiative, currently named the World Ocean Database Project, has been quite successful in finding millions of data. These currently reside in the World Ocean Database. Datasets you discover can be submitted to the project, or you can use methods in the Roadmaps Exercises to digitize them directly for your own use.
Hard Copy Example
By their very nature, we cannot show hard copy-format data here. As soon as they are scanned or digitized, then they fall into one of the other categories, often ASCII or PDF in the Document Formats type. A classic example of hard copy data is provided by the the SKAGEX Intercalibration Transect, described elsewhere in OceanTeacher. Although the data may actually be buried in archives somewhere, we were never able to locate the digital database and for many years we used photocopies of very worn, second-hand copy of the original report (kindly found for us by the Swedish Oceanographic Data Centre). That report has been scanned, and is available now as the following PDF file:
- SkagexReport.pdf - Technical report with valuable intercalibration data
Subsections of this Article
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Information about this article
Short title: Hard Copy Formats
Description: Data on paper, including all types of journals, logbooks, periodicals, etc.
Expertise level: beginner
Author: Murray.Brown
Approval status: approved
Approved by: Murray.Brown
Last change: 2009-7-22
Subsection of: Marine Data Format Types
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