Looking into the future…

Providing Social Science Data Services

Jim Jacobs

First principles

Metadata are data about data -- information about information.

It’s all about having complete, accurate, re-usable metadata.

Software to process the metadata is secondary. We should be able to have metadata today that we know will be usable in unforeseeable computing environments (operating systems, software, hardware).

First principles

Metadata should be…

Comprehensive Complete Uncompromised Consistent Flexible Sharable Usable and re-usable Preservable

Parseable by computer

Documented Non-proprietary

How XML fits in…

XML is designed to be parseable with generic tools.

XML can encode meaning and can be self-documenting

XML is non-proprietary, open, flexible.

How XML fits in…

XML is designed to make it easy to find and usejust the elements you need from a large document.

“Cherry picking”

How XML fits in…

<stdyDscr> <citation> <titlStmt> <titl>Great Power Wars, 1495-1815</titl> <IDNo>9955</IDNo> </titlStmt> <rspStmt> <AuthEnty>Levy, Jack S.</AuthEnty> </rspStmt> <prodStmt> <fundAg>National Science Foundation.</fundAg> <grantNo>SES86-10567</grantNo> </prodStmt> <distStmt> <distrbtr abbr="ICPSR" affiliation="Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan" URI="http;//www.icpsr.umich.edu">Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research</distrbtr> <distDate date="1994-05-20">1994-05-20</distDate> </distStmt><serStmt> </serStmt> <verStmt> <dateAdded>1994-05-20</dateAdded> <dateUpdated>1994-05-20</dateUpdated> </verStmt> <biblCit>Levy, Jack S. GREAT POWER WARS, 1495-1815 [Computer file]. New Brunswick, NJ and Houston, TX: Jack S. Levy and T. Clifton Morgan …

<titl>Great Power Wars, 1495-1815</titl>

You can cherry-pick just what you need from a large XML document…

From legacies to the future

SAS SPSS OSIRIS PDF Paper Data dictionary Etc.

HTML PDF Any stat package Nesstar, SDA,

Dataverse Library OPAC Google OAI, METS, etc. RSS, RDF GIS DDI 3, 4…

DDI

From many contributors to many uses

researcher Data collector Analyst Data producer,

distributor Data archivist Data librarian Users of statistics Government

agency

The web Live documents Databases publications Data archives Data libraries Institutional

repositories Secondary

analysis New research New knowledge

DDI

OAIS Functional Model

Ingest

OAIS Functional Model

Archival Storage Access

Information Packages

SIP

OAIS Information Model

AIP DIP

SIP

SIP

DIP

DIP

Data stewardship life cycle

Data Repurposing

Data ProductionData Repository

Data Dissemination

Data Discovery

DDI Production

Data Repurposing

Data ProductionData Repository

Data Dissemination

Data Discovery

DDI Use

Data Repurposing

Data ProductionData Repository

Data Dissemination

Data Discovery

DDI will enable transformation

New kinds of data discovery (beyond “indexing”)

Metadata as a primary resource (metadata as data)

Metadata for data discovery ICPSR already uses DDI metadata to create its

Variables database. Nesstar and Dataverse software use metadata

to produce searchable indexes of data repositories

In the future we should see the harvesting of DDI from many repositories to create indexes across collections. (oclc.org/oaister/)

In the future we’ll see data discovery by concept and methodology and geography and time period, not just keyword.

Metadata as data

By structuring metadata according to a methodology (the lifecycle-of-data approach), we create metadata that we can treat as data.

We can analyze metadata the way we would analyze any data file.

As more metadata of this kind are created, we are accumulating a body of information that makes it possible to study trends across time and geography.

Metadata as data

The technical documentation for the Army's Korean conflict casualty electronic records file has casualty codes that were never used in the data files.

The presence of codes in the metadata for injury by lethal gas and by radiation exposure suggests that Army personnel who designed this record-keeping system expected the possible use of those as weapons. Examination of the data alone would have missed this suggestion.

The codes for 'place of casualty' included, in addition to South Korea Sector and North Korea Sector, the Indo-China Sector, Tibet Sector, Mongolia Sector, Honan Sector (sic), Manchuria Sector, North Japan Sector, South Japan Sector, South China Sector, and Formosa Sector."

Metadata as data

A researcher at the Danish Data Archive is doing a qualitative analysis of the questionnaires used in seven surveys about ethnic minorities in Danish society, "with the purpose of showing how surveys ... mirror and project societal understandings of the subjects under investigation."

Metadata as data

Wendy Thomas of the Minnesota Population Center examined U.S. Census metadata from 1790 through 2000 and compared the changing concept of race and ethnicity as embodied in the categories used by the Census Bureau questions over time. Those concepts are only documented in the metadata, not the Census data files themselves.