Terms and phrases that are used to represent categorical data values or for creating content in metadata records should reflect appropriate and accepted vocabularies in your community or institution. Methods used to identify and select the proper terminology include:
To assure that metadata correctly describes what is actually in a data file, visual inspection or analysis should be done by someone not otherwise familiar with the data and its format. This will assure that the metadata is sufficient to describe the data. For example, statistical software can be used to summarize data contents to make sure that data types, ranges and, for categorical data, values found, are as described in the documentation/metadata.
A data dictionary provides a detailed description for each element or variable in your dataset and data model. Data dictionaries are used to document important and useful information such as a descriptive name, the data type, allowed values, units, and text description. A data dictionary provides a concise guide to understanding and using the data.
Data files should be managed to avoid disorder. To facilitate access to files, all storage devices, locations and access accounts should be documented and accessible to team members. Use appropriate tools, such as version control tools, to keep track of the history of the data files. This will help with maintaining files in different locations, such as at multiple off-site backup locations or servers.
The parameters reported in the data set need to have names that clearly describe the contents. Ideally, the names should be standardized across files, data sets, and projects, in order that others can readily use the information.
The documentation should contain a full description of the parameter, including the parameter name, how it was measured, the units, and the abbreviation used in the data file.
A description of the contents of the data file should contain the following:
Data sets or collections are often composed of multiple files that are related. Files may have come from (or still be stored in) a relational database, and the relationships among the data tables or other entities are important if the data are to be reused. These relationships should be documented for a repository.
The spatial extent of your data set or collection as a whole should be described. The minimum acceptable description would be a bounding box describing the northern most, southern most, western most, and eastern most limits of the data.
The temporal extent over which the data within your dataset or collection was acquired or collected should be described. Normally this is done by providing
File formats are important for understanding how data can be used and possibly integrated. The following issues need to be documented:
Identification of any species represented in the data set should be as complete as possible.
Examples of standardized identification systems:
Document that steps used to integrate disparate datasets.
Many times significant overlap exists among metadata content standards. You should identify those standards that include the fields needed to describe your data. In order to describe your data, you need to decide what information is required for data users to discover, use, and understand your data. The who, what, when, where, how, why, and a description of quality should be considered. The description should provide enough information so that users know what can and cannot be done with your data.
Choose the right data type and precision for data in each column. As examples: (1) use date fields for dates; and (2) use numerical fields with decimal places precision. Comments and explanations should not be included in a column that is meant to include numeric values only. Comments should be included in a separate column that is designed for text. This allows users to take advantage of specialized search and computing functionality and improves data quality.
Multimedia data present unique challenges for data discovery, accessibility, and metadata formatting and should be thoughtfully managed. Researchers should establish their own requirements for management of multimedia during and after a research project using the following guidelines. Multimedia data includes still images, moving images, and sound. The Library of Congress has a set of web pages discussing many of the issues to be considered when creating and working with multimedia data. Researchers should consider quality, functionality and formats for multimedia data.
People have different perspectives on what data means to them, and how it can be used and interpreted in different contexts. Data users ranging from community participants to researchers in different domains can provide unique and valuable insights into data through the use of annotation and tagging. The community-generated notes and tags should be discoverable through the data search engine to enhance discovery and use.
When providing capabilities for community tagging and annotations, you should consider the following:
Items to consider when versioning data products:
A separate column should be used for data qualifiers, descriptions, and flags, otherwise there is the potential for problems to develop during analyses. Potential entries in the descriptor column:
Understand the input geospatial data parameters, including scale, map projection, geographic datum, and resolution, when integrating data from multiple sources. Care should be taken to ensure that the geospatial parameters of the source datasets can be legitimately combined. If working with raster data, consider the data type of the raster cell values as well as if the raster data represent discrete or continuous values. If working with vector data, consider feature representation (e.g., points, polygons, lines).
