| Often it is difficult for the public to access real research data for information or to work with it to perform research activities. One of the obstacles that potential researchers encounter is finding the data sources to import data to begin fundamental analysis for their research. There are numerous organizations in the world that share research data, but only with some limited access to the public. Nevada Research Data Center (NRDC) is one such organization that holds and records research data every day. The research data and results are unstructured data which can be in the form of huge data sets, videos, photographs, etc. Providing larger access to NRDC data will help more people gain knowledge and possibly perform academic research activities. One of the solutions for enabling online access to the public is to build a repository to save and share NRDC research data and results. The proposed NRDC Data Steward is a web application that provides access to the repository which allows the public to view, download, and share the research data which can be used for performing academic research activities and knowledge sharing. A public user can also contribute to the application by adding/uploading research information that will contribute to the research data and its results, which in turn would help other users. This thesis presents the software specification, design, and prototype implementation of the NRDC Data Steward web-based application. The thesis also provides background on related data forms, describes NRDC Data Steward development tools, presents feedback on the application obtained from several software developers who participated in a testing session, and suggests directions for future work. |
