Bubbling on the institutional radar: Charting the topography of digital data at Queen’s University of Belfast  

Queen’s University Belfast is a Russell Group University, the UK’s Ivy League, and research-active institution, founded in 1845. It is a UK leader in a broad range of disciplines with 99% of research as world leading or internationally excellent (REF 2021). Its Library is part of the network of Research Libraries UK (RLUK), boasting significant unique digital assets, including an Open Access institutional repository (research outputs repository, thesis repository & research data repository), as well as Northern Ireland Official Publications Archive (NIOPA) with de facto legal deposit status. As an institution, we must address a litany of issues and obstacles faced in the governance, maintenance, security and preservation of this unique digital data. This includes preservation formats for content in these repositories, the challenges of structured versus unstructured data, anticipated moves to cloud-based solutions and different repository vendors, funder mandates to preserve and share data, & data access committees and governance for controlled/restricted data. This paper outlines the various attendant problems, the current state of play and necessary contexts (e.g. FAIR, Open Access, funders & legislation) and asks the questions ‘Who is the making the call on vital decision making about unique assets?’, ‘Collectively, are we informed enough to do this?’, ‘What is the necessary governance and infrastructure?’ and ‘Are we ready to face an uncertain future where the stability and permanence of digital assets may be hampered by indecision, data loss, confusion, obfuscation and the unpredictability of digital data now and into the future?' This paper argues that since national/international agreement about some good practices are formative, principle-based or not fully understood or applied (e.g. FAIR data & preservation formats) it is even more imperative that partnership, collaboration and discussion happen at both micro and macro levels to harness the security, access and longevity our unique digital data collections.