The repatriation of human remains in New Zealand is occurring today in a co-operative, low-profile manner, while in most other parts of the world it attracts high publicity, debate and antagonism. It is shown that the situation in New Zealand is fundamentally different because aspects of Maori culture influenced the kind of remains sought, the way they were collected and also the political and cultural development of the country, so that today Maori are in a much stronger position in their own country than are other indigenous populations around the world. The repatriation movement is thus to a large degree controlled by Maori, whereas other indigenous peoples often require media attention and government intervention in order to achieve their aims, if they are able to at all. It is argued that other colonial countries and their museums first need to solve fundamental issues involving internal intercultural relations before they will be able to move forward in a positive, cooperative manner with repatriation.

Scientific progress is driven by the availability of information, which makes it essential that data be broadly, easily and rapidly accessible to researchers in every field. In addition to being good scientific practice, provision of supporting data in a convenient way increases experimental transparency and improves research efficiency by reducing unnecessary duplication of experiments. There are, however, serious constraints that limit extensive data dissemination. One such constraint is that, despite providing a major foundation of data to the advantage of entire community, data producers rarely receive the credit they deserve for the substantial amount of time and effort they spend creating these resources. In this regard, a formal system that provides recognition for data producers would serve to incentivize them to share more of their data.The process of data citation, in which the data themselves are cited and referenced in journal articles as persistently identifiable bibliographic entities, is a potential way to properly acknowledge data output. The recent publication of several sorghum genomes in Genome Biology is a notable first example of good data citation practice in the field of genomics and demonstrates the practicalities and formatting required for doing so. It also illustrates how effective use of persistent identifiers can augment the submission of data to the current standard scientific repositories.

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Predicting the costs of long-term digital preservation is a crucial yet complex task for even the largest repositories and institutions. For smaller projects and individual researchers faced with preservation requirements, the problem is even more overwhelming, as they lack the accumulated experience of the former. Yet being able to estimate future preservation costs is vital to answering a range of important questions for each. The LIFE (Life Cycle Information for E-Literature) project, which has just completed its third phase, helps institutions and researchers address these concerns, reducing the financial and preservation risks, and allowing decision makers to assess a range of options in order to achieve effective preservation while operating within financial restraints. The project is a collaboration between University College London (UCL), The British Library and the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow.