ALA Metadata Goals and Issues

1
ALA Metadata - Goals and Issues

• Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living
  Australia
• 29 August 2008

2
Metadata Goals

• Government funding for repository development (6
  developers)
• Catalogue biodiversity information resources
• Databases (specimen/observation, taxonomy,
  sequences, other)
• Images, literature, web pages
• Australian Phenomics Network data (mouse)
• Australian Plant Phenomics Network data
  (Arabidopsis, etc.)
• Enhance metadata via user annotations and
  ontologies
• Taxon concepts, gazetteer terms, mouse ontology,
  etc.
• Automated tagging from harvested data and text
  mining
• User annotations for additional tags
• Faceted interfaces to browse and search metadata
  by hierarchy
• Exchange metadata with other repositories
  (OAI-PMH)
• Contribute to wider national e-research framework
  (ANDS)

3
Metadata Issues

• Selection of appropriate standard for core
  metadata (EML?)
• Granularity of resources described by metadata
• Whole databases vs. individual records/images/docu
  ments
• Should handle nested resources (metadata scoped
  at different levels)
• Best practices for the use of OAI-PMH Sets
• Selection of appropriate categories to act as
  Sets
• Global coordination of metadata documents
• Identifiers for resources (LSIDs or other GUIDs)
• Recognition of original version of supplied
  metadata
• Tracking reuse and aggregation of metadata
• Avoidance of false duplication and noisy feedback
• Handling of metadata for cross-domain resources
• Ownership and annotation of metadata
• E.g. resource of use in biodiversity and climate
  research