Discovering Australia's research data

Access to data crucial to research is often slow and difficult. When research problems cross disciplinary boundaries, problems are exacerbated. This paper argues that it is important to make it easier to find and access data that might be found in an institution, in a disciplinary data store, in a government department, or held privately. We explore how to meet ad hoc needs that cannot easily be supported by a disciplinary ontology, and argue that web pages that describe data collections with rich links and rich text are valuable. We describe the approach followed by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) in making such pages available. Finally, we discuss how we plan to evaluate this approach.