What is eResearch? How can it help me?

Broadly speaking, eResearch is the application of advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the practice of research. This can be considered as somewhat analogous to the application of e-Commerce to the commercial sector- new tools and techniques open up new possibilities as well as new ways of doing what has always been done. We now take for granted ways of shopping, of making payments, that were not feasible previously.
The range of areas in which eResearch methods can be applied is vast. A very few such examples are

• large-scale, robust and user-transparent data transfer, storage and searching capabilities
• submission of high-performance compute jobs to facilities remote from the user's location
• tools to allow local, national and international meetings and information-sharing on users' desktop and laptop machines
• seeking patterns and correlations in previously unmanageable data-sets
• simple and unified login access to local, state and national services

That is eResearch can help you obtain, store, analyse and interpret your data. It can keep you in touch and working with your colleagues no matter where they may be. In short, it helps you do research. Some of these possibilities may have been previously conceptualised- but were not practicable. Some of them are more effective and efficient ways of doing things that have long been done. In all cases, though, we may expect benefits to the way in which our research progresses as a result.
Eventually, there will not be "eResearch" as something distinct in its own right- it will just be part of the way we undertake research, an assumed and relied-upon suite of capabilities that form an integral component of how researchers do their work.