Making metadata be FAIR, in particular enhancing the ‘R’? – The
Approach of the Australian Metadata Working Group.
Abstract
Any catalogue describing objects will contain metadata: such systems are
built to improve findability (F) and accessibility (A). However, a
content rich metadata framework, carefully developed by communities with
broad interests, can also ensure an interoperability (I) and
re-usability (R) of described objects. The Australian Metadata Working
Group (MDWG), supported by the Australian and New Zealand Land
Information Council and Intergovernmental Committee for Surveying and
Mapping, is building one of these FAIR frameworks. The group comprises
of federal and jurisdictional governments, research organisations and
academia which provides a wide spectrum of use cases of
multi-disciplinary community needs. The MDWG recognises multiple aspects
of reusability to ensure consistent adoption of the Australian Metadata
Profile based on the ISO 19115-1 standard including: Reusability of
content: defining a list of elements to ensure content-rich
self-describing metadata that can be interpreted by both humans and
machines to: capture data dictionaries to enable dataset reconstruction
record technical details for services to ensure their correct usage and
associated code reuse understand resource quality and provenance to
ensure its correct usage specify licence and security conditions to
understand preventing the reuse factors consistent reuse of existing
community vocabularies (or develop and openly publish new for reuse by
others) record resource formats to support access to resources
Reusability of the Australian Metadata Profile through publishing its
model and XML to ensure consistent adoption of metadata patterns:
developing XML examples building user guides and other communication
materials Reusability of tools and their deployment: investigation and
testing metadata creation, publishing and validation tools, sharing
tricks and lessons learnt The MDWG has successfully delivered reusable
tools, a consistent profile and user guide plus defined metadata
elements with clear purposes. The wealth of combined expertise, sharing
of resources and technical support also provided the first example of
the ISO 19115-1 standard adoption and re-use of metadata tools, thus,
providing great savings to organisations in developing and
implementation time and budget.