The 'Endangered Data' List

Researchers have begun to search for "endangered data" — scientific data that are at risk of being lost, either because they're stored on old media, or because they're held by those who aren't aware of their value, reports Nature News' Linda Nordling. The team aims to search museums and research institutes and build an inventory of "threatened" data, which they plan to publish online in 2012, Nordling says. The project is not only targeting data in old books or pictures, but also stored on magnetic tape and floppy disks, which will make it especially difficult to retrieve, the author adds.