The UK National e–Science Centre defines e–science as "the large scale science that will increasingly be carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. Typically, a feature of such collaborative scientific enterprises is that they will require access to very large data collections, very large scale computing resources and high performance visualization back to the individual user scientists." E–science is defined broadly to include all of the natural and physical sciences, related applied and technological disciplines, as well as biomedicine and social sciences sharing research approaches with the natural sciences.
The Task Force is jointly organized by the Research Teaching and Learning Steering Committee and the Scholarly Communication Committee to recommend and initiate strategies to address emerging issues in the development of e-science for ARL libraries.
The work of the Task Force includes:
The Task Force monitors activities at the agencies and organizations that fund science research. In addition it is seeking points of intersection with key initiatives such as Science Commons.
The Task Force consults freely with either or both sponsoring steering committees as appropriate. Recommendations will be made to the ARL Board (copying the sponsoring steering committees).
At the end of its term the Task Force will prepare a final report for the sponsoring steering committees indicating its accomplishments and making final recommendations for future action by the steering committees or ARL.
Several documents were recommended to the Task Force for background reading:
The Task Force is expected to complete its work by the end of calendar 2007.
A modest need for ARL staff support is anticipated.