Why RDA? A domain repository perspective George Alter ICPSR University of Michigan

Background: Domain Repository meetings hosted by ICPSR “Sustaining Domain Repositories for Digital Data,” Ann Arbor, June 24-25, 2013 “Integrating Domain Repositories into the National Data Infrastructure,” Ann Arbor, November 20-21, 2014 Each meeting attended by >20 domain repositories Funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation RDA Domain Repositories IG is an outcome

Why domain repositories? Scientific research is highly specialized. Discipline-specific expertise is needed to understand the content and use of data. Domain repositories interpret and advance the needs of their disciplines. Domain repositories mediate between their disciplines and the expanding fields of information science and data science.

What do Domain Repositories worry about? Developing their collections Promoting usage of their collections Sustainable funding Domain repositories provide a service. We want those services to be used. We believe/hope that services that are used will be funded.

RDA’s value is not obvious Domain repository leaders come from the domains not from the information sciences Most scientists are happy with the way that they do their work Semantics, ontologies, etc. are not obviously useful Everyone hates creating metadata

How can RDA help? RDA cannot help repositories speak to their communities or their funders. RDA can help repositories perform their functions better.

Turning Data into Knowledge For data to produce science it must be Discoverable Accessible Meaningful Usable Trustworthy Persistent These are the roles of the Data Repository.

Roles are expressed in functions Data curation –Metadata –Standardization –Quality assurance Discovery and distribution –Discovery tools –Access systems –Data Use Agreements Preservation –Multiple copies –Stable formats –Documentation All repository functions are built on standards. RDA can make standards: Consistent Effective Interoperable

Examples WG Data citation: Making Dynamic Data Citeable –Citing data derived from electronic health records (EHR) Data Type Registries WG –Converting question banks from social surveys into a variable registry

RDA and Domain Repositories RDA already has products and tools that will help domain repositories RDA must speak in language the repositories understand RDA must create events and venues that bring the repositories together on their own terms

THANK YOU! George Alter