  LIGO --- The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory --- is one
of several large projects being undertaken in the United States, Europe and
Japan to detect gravitational radiation. The novelty and precision of these
instruments is such that large volumes of data will be generated in an attempt
to find a small number of weak signals, which can be identified only as subtle
changes in the instrument output over time. In this paper, I discuss the how
the nature of the LIGO experiment determines the size of the data archive that
will be produced, how the nature of the analyses that must be used to search
the LIGO data for signals determines the anticipated access patterns on the
archive, and how the LIGO data analysis system is designed to cope with the
problems of LIGO data analysis.
