[DDI-users] When the Author of a DDI isn't the Archive

[Reto Hadorn]

Hi Mark,


docDscr expressed the conception of the codebook as a document, which was 
created by an identifiable service and/or person. The document based XML 
expression of the metadata model could only confirm that approach.

In the new life-cycle approach, the metadata may pass through several 
systems, be modified by still more actors, and published in several forms. 
The metadata model is not any more just the base for a document which will 
make visible the work of the publishing data archive, but a resource for 
many people and services along the life cycle of the data.

Hence we need a new concept, which could be 'action', defined by an author, 
an action, a process etc. (to be further analysed!) and attached to various 
objects in the metadata model depending on the type of action (research 
project, study design, dataset, variable, questionnaire etc. etc.). 
'Publication' could be one of those actions, where the kind of publication 
should be more precisely defined (codebook, question base, Nesstar server, 
VDC etc.). The creation of the XML file would not be the founding act of 
the metadata publication, since the latter can take many forms, based on 
various implementations of the metadata model (database, XML file). 
Metadata entry, data processing, consistency controls, import of external 
variables, construction of variables may be other possible actions.

Perhaps this approach can be combined with a general solution for various 
roles, in which persons and services are mentioned in the metadata model 
('author', funding agency, distributor). There is still some analysis work 
ahead...


Best wishes

Reto





At 31.08.2005, you wrote:
>Hello DDI community,
>
>I'm working on a project for the VDC right now which I could use some advice.
>
>In a DDI the "docDscr" section is reserved for both the Author to describe 
>bibliographic information about the DDI-compliant document itself as a 
>whole (producer) and for the archive to describe the document in their 
>system (archive).
>
>I see often that tools use this to propagate information about the 
>creation of the DDI (for instance Nesstar Publisher inserts info about the 
>software used to author the document). In a VDC we do likewise, injecting 
>a docDscr into any imported DDI content describing the Instance within our 
>system.
>
>My question is the following: When the Author of a DDI isn't the Archive, 
>for instance, because it was produced external of the archive but imported 
>into the archive, should the Archive insert a DocDscr of its own as well? 
>Should it preserve the original docDscrs? These may seem mundane or 
>obvious questions, but there isn't any real policy suggesting such.
>
>In the case that we simply maintain docDscr for each, they can be 
>separated conceptually by their source="archive|producer". Is this enough 
>to maintain separate distinction? Is this enough to maintain provenance? 
>What if there are other other archival docDscrs present, is there a policy 
>for their preservation? How do we reuse them in our system to maintain the 
>provenance chain?
>
>Finally, when attempting to document a chain of provenance on the study, 
>such information is very important. Not only am I referring to the path 
>this instance took to get into my archive, but also important 
>Acknowledgment, Access and  Usage policies which the originators would 
>require to be enforced by my archive. While its interesting to preserve 
>these things, its extremely difficult to use them for machine actionable 
>purposes. My challenge to the group is how do we support such "machine 
>actionable" capabilities in such a case. In my opinion, this is an area 
>that the DDI is very weak in functioning. What are your experiences with 
>using the docDscr to really maintain archival information that is useful 
>by our systems?
>
>Looking forward to you opinion on the subject,
>-Mark
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