CNI Spring 2017 Membership Meeting

This project briefing will present work being conducted at the University of Oklahoma (OU) to develop strategies and best practices for addressing the digital preservation and data curation needs associated with adopting the use of virtual reality (VR) and 3D digital assets in academic research and instruction. Since January 2016, OU Libraries has deployed eight networked VR workstations across campus, and since then, successful course integrations and research applications at OU - including architecture, structural biology, anthropology, and medical imaging - have demonstrated the capacity of VR to enhance spatial thinking, visual literacy and embodied information acquisition. Along with these new scholarly possibilities that VR offers, emerge new data management and digital preservation problems, including how to properly document and manage 3D research data throughout complex and iterative research practices, how to maintain chain of custody and document data precision, and how to sustain consistent access to VR technologies as they change over time. Addressing these concerns is critical to supporting reproducibility and integrity for research. This project briefing will draw from our real-world experiences of deploying VR in teaching and research to discuss these key issues related to the preservation of VR-related data, software and hardware. We will discuss current work focused on the development of infrastructure and best practices for archiving VR/3D research data on campus and beyond, exploring the following issues: sustainable 3D file formats; associated metadata (schemas and workflows); data repositories; and VR software and hardware preservation. The major takeaways from this presentation will include strategies for the development of “preservation-ready” academic VR platforms; identification of existing and future institutional collaborations; and preservation planning for 3D research outputs.