Data Management: Documentation & Metadata Metadata (Structured Documentation)

2 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

3 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?

4 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

5 Metadata Formats Structured documentation in XML format for use in discovery programs (searching), examples: – DDI– Data Document Initiative – FGDC– Geospatial Metadata Standard – EML– Ecological Metadata Language

6 FGDC Example

7 Standard Vocabulary Controlled vocabulary – MeSH – DDI Vocabularies DDI Vocabularies Standard codes Standard formats (date/time/geo-spatial) ISO 8601 – YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD T19:20: :00 Spatial Coordinates for Latitute/Longitude +/- DD.DDDDD (longitude) (latitude)

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

9 Example 1: Nesstar DDI Tool

10 Example 2: Metavist FGDC Tool

11 Metadata Standards Metadata Concept Map by Amanda Tarbet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.