Subject: meta-data

From: [email-masked] (John J. Kineman)
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 19:40:43 -700

I'm new to this forum and so don't have much background on your discussions. 
Is there a summary or something that I can get to catch up?

My own work is with a national data center and I have been conducting a 
project in data integration for global change. I have thus thought a great 
deal about data, meta-data, etc. and have developed some protocols for my 
project that I hope will help influence the general field. In my own view, 
data are indeed different from meta-data, which is indeed different from 
Documentation. "Data" in my view, is defined by authorship. That is, a data 
set is defined by the principal investigator. The PI may include meta-data 
headers and descriptors, but these are not part of the primary intellectual 
product that would be published in the scientific literature (ideally). I am 
strongly promoting the concept of data "publications" with analogous 
conventions and protocols as for reviewed scientific literature. If we take 
that as a model, the formats, which often include changes in meta-data, 
would be more within the scope of the data publisher than the PI, although, 
as with literature, there must be dialog to ensure that meta-data and format 
changes do not unduely alter the intellectual content of the PI's work, in 
this case as reflected in the dataset. Going one step further, I make the 
distinction between meta-data and documentation somewhat more arbitrarily, 
considering numerical information such as in header files (i.e., locational 
reference systems, resolution, coverage, projection, temporal character, 
etc.) meta-data, and written descriptions or analyses (e.g., of quality, 
application, descriptions of the original study, etc.) that help understand 
the dataset and its limits and applications as "documentation." In my view, 
meta-data are digital information intended for use by a computer program, 
while documentation is information intended for use by a person. Naturally, 
one could argue that future programs could access and use digitized 
documentation, but again the criterion is more based on original design and 
intent than subsequent fact.

I would like to know what people think about the concept of data publishing. 
In my mind, without such a concept, we cannot have truly scientific data.

-----------------------------------------------
John J. Kineman, Physical Scientist/Ecologist
Ecosystems and Global Change
National Geophysical Data Center
325 Broadway  E/GC1  (3100 Marine St. Rm: A-152)
Boulder, Colorado  80303  USA
(303) 497-6900 (phone)
(303) 497-6513 (fax)