Infrastructuring for the long-term: ecological information management

Abstract

This paper foregrounds the long-term perspective and the role of information management in creating infrastructure to support collaborative ecological research. The case study of the long-term ecological research network is an ongoing research collaboration that integrates ethnographic and action research approaches. We describe three interdependent elements of science, data and technology for which information management provides support, and the articulation work needed for balancing their inherent tensions and the requirements generated by short and long term timeframes. We further describe information managers' learning community and collaboration-in-design, two mechanisms created within the LTER for continuing technology development over the long-term. The notion of infrastructuring is related to ecological information management as an ongoing design process that highlights participation and co-construction, as well as the complex relationships between the long-term, data, participants, collaborations, information systems, and infrastructure. The understudied area that entails issues of long-term, care/maintenance, and infrastructure presents challenges for the design of large-scale collaborative information systems.