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Group Session August 8, 2021

Metadata Crosswalks and Relationship to the Metadata Elements

Plenary: RDA 18th Plenary Meeting – Virtual

Submitted by
Rebecca Koskela
Recording

Meeting objectives

Increasingly, research and hence socio-economic and technical challenges require integration/interoperation of data. This requires processes to align the data in terms of appropriate values, accuracy, precision across datasets, which in turn requires mapping of metadata schemas describing the datasets to a common canonical form.  This is generally known as cross-walking.  The meeting will discuss existing cross-walking resources including documented mappings and tools, some of which are in the Metadata Standards Catalog (MSC) of the RDA, how they can be supplemented by new schemas and crosswalks, and how the crosswalk specifications and tools can be used to (semi-)automate actual data conversion to achieve integrated, interoperable, cross-domain data assets.

Meeting presenters

Rebecca Koskela; Keith Jeffery; Alex Ball; Jane Greenberg; Milan Ojsteršek

Meeting agenda

Collaborative session notes: https://bit.ly/MIG_Notes

 

  • Welcome & Introductions – Rebecca Koskela (5 min)

  •  Review Objectives of the Meeting – Keith Jeffery (9 min)

  •  Metadata Standards Catalog Current Status – Alex Ball  (12 min)

  •  Metadata, Ontologies, and the Interoperability Continuum – Jane Greenberg (12 min)

  •  Independent Crosswalking Effort – Milan Ojsteršek (12 min)

  • Discussion on the alignment of Element Set with Metadata required for crosswalks and interoperability (30 min)

  • Next Steps (10 min)

Target audience

All RDA  colleagues interested in integrating/interoperating datasets as well as metadata and metadata schema specialists.

Additional links to informative material

  1. Metadata Interest Group: https://www.rd-alliance.org/groups/metadata-ig.html

  2. Metadata Elements: https://bit.ly/MIG_Elements

  3. Community-maintained version of the Digital Curation Centre’s Disciplinary Metadata Catalogue:  http://rd-alliance.github.io/metadata-directory/

  4. Digital Curation Centre Disciplinary Metadata: https://www.dcc.ac.uk/guidance/standards/metadata

  5. Metadata Standards Catalog: https://rdamsc.bath.ac.uk/

  6. IEEE Big Data Governance and Metadata Management Working Group: https://sagroups.ieee.org/2957/

Short Group Status

The Metadata Interest Group (MIG) is supported by individuals and organizations involved in the development, implementation, and use of metadata for scientific data.  MIG’s chief objective is to identify and endorse metadata solutions for addressing data management challenges. Metadata is crucial for the discovery, access, preservation, exchange, manipulation, and use/re-use of research data.  Metadata discussions frequently focus on community-specific issues such as discipline-specific standards; however, there are dimensions of metadata that are of general interest, cross disciplines, and are amenable to broad community input.  MIG endorses metadata solutions that balance domain-specific and interdisciplinary needs.

MIG has proposed metadata ‘packages’ for the commonly required purposes; a ‘package’ consists of elements (attributes or data structures) the values of which relate to the unique identity of the dataset or record (instance).  To assure machine processing a formal syntax and declared semantics are required, and the packages must exhibit referential and functional integrity as well as human readability. This Metadata Element Set is intended to become an RDA recommendation. The element set has been shared with and reviewed by many of the RDA domain groups.

Avoid conflict with the following groups

ESIP/RDA Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences IG
Preservation Tools, Techniques, and Policies
Preserving Scientific Annotation WG