[Air-l] AoIR communal data-database

[jeremy hunsinger]

yes, but I don't think one needs to have metadata at the level of 
variables.  People might want that data, then they should see if the 
study might have that information, download the study and look for it 
themselves.  I think one needs to have it at the level of the study.  
I'm assuming that this will all be in a database eventually, so 
categories such as the openarchives.org metadata set would be best, it 
is a standard, it describes unique objects like a study, etc.

the lack of exact and complete metadata has not hindered the development 
of such projects in the past, i guess in the end it is always a balance 
between the practical and the ideal situations.


On Sunday, November 18, 2001, at 03:05 PM, Charlie Hendricksen wrote:

> Yes, the "codebook" for the study should have all the metadata
> necessary.  But are the codebooks searchable?  If the repository is of
> any size at all, then it needs to be searchable.  Would you like to
> read all the codebooks in order to see if there was any data you could
> use?  If the codebooks are disassembled and placed in a database that
> allows searching then the repository is very useful.  My guess is that
> codebooks are idiosyncratic and of wildly varying quality.  This means
> that the metadata would be incomplete in many cases.
>
> This raises the issue of what the metadata should include.
jeremy hunsinger
on the ibook
www.cddc.vt.edu
www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy