There are a significant number of documents and data related to the marine environment that have never been published, and thus not available for use by the scientific community.
These documents and data are important because they help define the state of the coastal environment in the past, and are essential when evaluating the current state of degradation and setting restoration goals.
Due to the nature of paper and electronic media on which they exist, and in some cases the conditions in which they are housed, a significant amount of data and documents are in jeopardy of being irretrievably lost.
The Coastal and Estuarine Data/Document Archeology and Rescue (CEDAR) Program for South Florida collects unpublished data and documents on the South Florida ecosystem, restores information judged valuable to the South Florida restoration effort, and distributes the rescued material electronically to the scientific community, academia and the public.
"Data Archaeology" describes the process of seeking out, restoring, evaluating, correcting, and interpreting historical data sets. "Data Rescue" is the effort to save data at risk of being lost.
CEDAR is focused on coastal and estuarine data and documents. CEDAR is more than simple document scanning. It reviews and edits scanned material to insure clarity and completeness. CEDAR requires the joint effort of librarians and scientists. The librarians are needed to locate material, catalog it, and make it available. The scientist ascertains completeness of the data and documents.
To date, more than one hundred documents have been rescued as part of the CEDAR effort for South Florida, and are available through the CEDAR Internet web site. The major data sets rescued have been published as joint CD reports in cooperation with the originating institutions.
