The French NATIONAL CYBER CORE REPOSITORY: a user-oriented approach to promote the referencing of scientific cores
Résumé
In plaeosciences the question of data management is made sensitive by the need of preserving and managing high value fragile geological samples: cores. Large international scientific programs, such as IODP or ICDP led intense effort for such, proposing detailed high standard work- and dataflows. However many paleoscience results derived from small-scale research programs in which data and sample management are too often managed only locally – when they are. In France a national effort is currently led to develop an integrated system to curate ice and sediment cores. Under the umbrella of the national excellence equipment program CLIMCOR, we launched a reflexion about core curating and the management of associated fieldwork data. Our aim was then to preserve all data from fieldwork in an integrated cyber-environment. To do so, our demarche was conducted through an intimate relationship with field operators and laboratory core curators in order to propose user-oriented solutions. We built a single web portal that is used as a national hub from any team’s data and to international standards (IGSNs, INSPIRE) and databases (IMLGS). For legacy samples, this requires the establishment of a dedicated cores list with associated metadata. However, for forthcoming core data, we developed a mobile application to capture technical and scientific data directly on the field. This application is linked with a unique coring-tools library and is adapted to most coring devices (gravity, drilling, percussion etc.) including multiple sections and holes coring operations. In this paper, we present the architecture of the integrated system, future perspectives and the approach we adopted to reach our goals. We will also present our mobile application through didactic examples.