An Oceanographic Event Logger James R. Wilkinson and Karen S. Baker Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego Field Practices Purpose Methods Information Infrastructure Design and Use Event Logger System = Event Logger(s) + Event Number + GPS => Event Log Event Number : GPS Timestamp An oceanographic event logger, recently deployed on CalCOFI research cruises, extends data coordination into the data collection arena. The event logger system – consisting of networked PCs, communal event log, GPS coordinates and event indexing – promotes standard conventions & establishes relationships between diverse data efforts at the time of collection. The event logger addresses issues of time, space and categorization using standard vocabulary in order to assist subsequent data integration and exchange. It becomes one element of an information infrastructure that contributes to creating a common dataspace (Franklin et al, 2005), both conceptual and physical, that stretches from field to land and back again. Project-specific data management must support data community coordination. By using the event logging system throughout the ship, all cruise participants, on any workstation, are able to:  contribute uniquely indexed events to the cruise event log.  establish a common coordinate system to log all samples from shared activities, such as rosette sampling, using the event index and its ship-based GPS date, time, latitude & longitude.  relationally link diverse data products from shared events post-cruise using the index as a relational database identifier.  correlate continuous data, such that weather, acoustics, or sea-surface temperature measurement, to individual or grouped events using the common coordinate system. Digital practices from data collection to data preservation are supported by Information Infrastructure. Infrastructure-building draws on the fields of informatics, information systems, science and technology studies, library and information sciences as well as infrastructure studies. At SIO, an Ocean Informatics environment supports the design, development, deployment, and enactment of effective data practices as part of community infrastructure- building (Baker et al, 2006). Design theory and classification analysis are playing an active role in the iterative development of the CalCOFI Event Logger (Lindseth & Baker, 2006). Our methodology enables interplay of shared vocabulary-building and controlled vocabulary list- use. This facilitates a collective understanding of data and its organizing in addition to ensuring that data are well represented and integrated within the data community. Event Logger features include:  Configuration files to create local flexibility required for varying ship platforms and group interests  Authoritative lists of shared vocabulary established to accommodate changing vocabulary and maintainability as well as to contribute to sociotechnical process-building  Event numbers enmeshed in field practices that travel from sea to land as a data index incorporated into the architecture of the information system Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Ocean Informatics participants who are designing for the long-term, the field participants - ship and scientific staff - who are enacting the system, as well as the community participants who are co-constructing the system. In particular we recognize the work of Robert Thombley, Shonna Dovel, and Jessie Powell. This work has been supported by NOAA CalCOFI and NSF Long-Term Ecological Research and Human Social Dynamics Programs. CalCOFI Conference 2006 References Baker, K., SJJackson, and JRWanetick, Strategies Supporting Heterogeneous Data and Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Towards an Ocean Informatics Environment. Proceedings of the 38 th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. HICSS38, IEEE Computer Society, 2-6 January 2005, Big Island, Hawaii, Hawaii International Franklin, M., A.Halevy, and D.Maier, From Dataspaces: A New Abstraction for Information Management. SIGMOD Record 34(4): Lindseth, B. and K.Baker, Collaborative Design of an Oceanographic Event Logger. Proceedings of the Computer Human Interface Conference CHI2007. (submitted). Cruise Event Log Cruise Activities Lab Activities CUFES Activities Marine Mammal Activities Bridge Activities Installation of the event log software on individual, networked Windows workstations enables local, project-specific activities lists (main figure). Each workstation polls common GPS & event number files, incrementing the value when an event is recorded. A cruise log tabulates all logged events. Each workstation also generates a separate project- specific activities log. Current requirements:  standalone: Windows pc with GPS  networked: multiple Windows pcs with GPS on one and a mapped network directory A FIELD PERSPECTIVE A DATA STEWARDSHIP PERSPECTIVE