USGS ScienceBase Making Connections with Metadata Integration GSA2011 R. Sky Bristol

ScienceBase Catalog

More than data… It’s important to find the data assets I need for my research, but I also need to track back and gain access to the scientific papers that describe collection and processing methods in more detail, the projects that led to those papers, and the scientists who conducted the research.

ScienceBase Item Types Digital Data Physical Data Derived Information Software and Tools Citations and Publications Project Information People and Organizations

Item Sources ScienceBase Item Repository Harvests Forms and Uploads Batch Loading

Integration Points Contacts Geospatial Setting TerminologyTime Period References and Relationships Usage

Contact Integration If data documentation all had complete provenance information (data about how the data were created and processed), then we might not need to know how to get in contact with the data originator. Almost no data has complete provenance documentation, and the way we go about getting and using other people’s data is by personal contact.

Disambiguation Challenge Single individual publishing under different name variants Single individual publishing under different name variants Same common name Same common name Incomplete metadata Incomplete metadata Lots of new authors in an interdisciplinary world Lots of new authors in an interdisciplinary world - Smalheiser and Torvik NOAA GEO-IDE Wiki

Unanticipated Good Uses ScienceBase Services provide items via XML and JSON feeds to support many other uses and interfaces.

Continuing Work Contacts Geospatial Setting TerminologyTime Period References and Relationships Usage Master Extents Gazetteer Indexing Spatial Grid Indexing Vocabulary Registry Temporal Indexing to common grids Master research index Implicit and explicit usage analytics Master directory services Cloud Services and Indexing for other APIs Open standard data services, search engine indexing, important niche services for master reference data (e.g., FOAF)

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