Let’s talk “Metadata”
You’ve seen this word thrown around a lot! Data about data. Data Documentation. Information about your data. So many different ways to define “metadata”.
If you’ve been reading our blog posts – you know that we are STRONG advocates for data documentation!! I, personally, am a STRONG believer in metadata – without it – all that time and money that was put into data collection has been flushed away. Without that crucial documentation or metadata – the data you or your team collected is useless since no one can understand what the data is – let alone understand how to use it.
Let’s add another word now – Standards. Yes! Believe it or not there are many different metadata standards out there! I would argue that most scientific disciplines have an established metadata standard. Now – as a researcher – are you familiar with these? Did you know there was a metadata standard for your field of research?
At Agri-food Data Canada, we are aware that this can be very overwhelming – so that’s one of the primary reasons we encourage you to use the Semantic Engine to document the data that you collect – as you would collect it. Let’s work at documenting the data in a machine readable/actionable format – then we can translate it to the metadata standard that your field of research uses. WOW! Easy peasy? Ok there’s some work involved in creating crosswalks across metadata standards – but first and foremost – let’s NOT fret about what the best or recommended metadata standard is in your field – let’s DOCUMENT that data – and cross-walk it over later. Let’s be honest – most of us forget to document and need to go back months later and remember what we did! So document now in an easy to use format – Semantic Engine – and then come talk to us about how to cross-walk to the metadata standard in your field.
Hang on! One more word today:
INTEROPERABILITY!
Let me just drop that one here – isn’t this part of what I’m rambling on about today?
