Data Management:Documentation & Metadata

Metadata (Structured Documentation)

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Metadata

• What is it?– Structured information that describes a resource– NISO: “metadata is structured information that

describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource”

• Why is it important?– Enables a resource or data to be easily discovered– Good metadata will help others understand and use

your data

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Metadata Answers…Who created the data?Who maintains it?When were the data collected? When were

they published?Where was it collected (geographic location)?What is the content of the data? The structure?Why were the data created?How were they produced/analyzed?

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Critical Roles of Metadata

• Data Discovery – To be able to identify important data sets

• Data Retrieval– To know how and where to access data

• Data Use– To know enough details about how the how the data were

collected and stored• Data Archiving– Data can grow more valuable with time, but only if the

critical information required to retrieve and interpret the data remains available

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Metadata FormatsStructured documentation in XML format for use in discovery programs (searching), examples:

– DDI– Data Document Initiativehttp://www.ddialliance.org/

– FGDC– Geospatial Metadata Standardhttp://www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-standards

– EML– Ecological Metadata Languagehttp://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/

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FGDC Example

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Standard Vocabulary• Controlled vocabulary– MeSH– DDI Vocabularies

• Standard codes• Standard formats (date/time/geo-spatial)

ISO 8601 – YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD1997-07-16T19:20:30.45+01:00

Spatial Coordinates for Latitute/Longitude +/- DD.DDDDD -78.476 (longitude)

+38.029 (latitude)

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Structured Metadata Tools

Tools– Colectica add-on for Excel (DDI)– Nesstar (DDI)– Metavist (FGDC)– ArcGIS (FGDC) *– Morpho (EML)

http://data.library.virginia.edu/data-management/plan/metadata/metadata-workshop/

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Example 1: Nesstar DDI Tool

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Example 2: Metavist FGDC Tool

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Metadata StandardsMetadata Concept Map by Amanda Tarbet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Unported License. http://libguides.bc.edu/content.php?pid=207685&sid=1897962