1. Looking into the future… DDI workshop IASSIST 2006 Jim Jacobs

2. 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).

3. First principles Metadata should be…  Comprehensive  Complete  Uncompromised  Consistent  Flexible  Sharable  Usable and re-usable  Preservable  Parseable by computer  Documented  Non-proprietary

4. 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.

5. How XML fits in… XML is designed to make it easy to find and use just the elements you need from a large document. “Cherry picking”

6. How XML fits in… Great Power Wars, 1495-1815 9955 Levy, Jack S. National Science Foundation. SES86-10567 <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 1994-05-20 1994-05-20 Levy, Jack S. GREAT POWER WARS, 1495-1815 [Computer file]. New Brunswick, NJ and Houston, TX: Jack S. Levy and T. Clifton Morgan … Great Power Wars, 1495-1815 You can cherry- pick just what you need from a large XML document…

7. From legacies to the future  SAS  SPSS  OSIRIS  PDF  Paper  Data dictionary  Etc.  HTML  PDF  Any stat package  Nesstar  Library OPAC  Google  OAI  RSS  RDF  DDI 2, 3, 4… DDI

8. From many contributors to many uses  researcher  Data collector  Analysts  Data producer, distributor  Data archivists  Data librarians  Users of statistics  Analysts  researchers  The web  Live documents  Databases  publications  Data archives  Data libraries  Institutional repositories  Secondary analysis  New research  New knowledge DDI