Margaret O’Brien (SBC) and Don Henshaw (AND)
The Information Management Committee (IMC) meeting at Estes Park was attended by over 50 site information managers and guests, and as usual, was the event at which we mark progress. The IMC continued its dialog on its own governance, as well as its interactions in network and community processes and project development models which suit both IMC and network CI needs. Our product-oriented working groups have been very productive over the past year, yielding results that both further integrate information management into network science, and enhance site functionality. The “Units Dictionary” group plans to launch its web services in 2010, allowing sites either to retrieve measurement units or to implement the dictionary and registry locally. Parts of our “Controlled Vocabulary” are already in place for dynamic searches in the network data catalog, and activities are now centered on the relationship of an LTER vocabulary to other efforts concerned with keyword and vocabulary modeling. The GIS working group has developed recommendations for spatial data to be reviewed by the IMC, and was given a post-ASM meeting award to complete their Google maps application, “LTERmaps.” See the contributions from those groups elsewhere in this issue.
Two new working groups were also established at the ASM, both of which highlight site-functionality and network partnerships. The “EML Metrics” working group is a community-wide collaboration of information managers and ecoinformatics programmers spearheaded by the LTER. Its goal is to create metrics and reporting tools for EML datasets to assure integrity and quality for automated ingestion by systems such as the NIS. A second group, “Network Web Services,” will focus on the functionality of LNO databases and the exchange of content between central databases and sites’ IM systems - functionality which is a key part of the LNO operational plan. The web services group will make recommendations which directly benefit site activities, including population of local web sites from network databases, providing standardized content for EML metadata, and streamlined contributions from sites to the network.
Since the September ASM, IMExec has been busy conducting bi-monthly meetings via videoconferencing (VTC). These meetings have largely been devoted to planning IMC activities such as the monthly virtual water cooler sessions, considering future production workshop and training workshop possibilities, coordination of site activities, and most recently, reviewing the draft LTER Network Office (LNO) Operational Plan. Once accepted, the Operational Plan will govern activities at LNO for the next 6 years, including development of the Network Information System (NIS), and is highly relevant to site information management efforts.
IMExec has considered the coordination of cross-site activities should additional funding be provided to sites. Funding could be directed toward improving the quality and availability of EML metadata and data or improving network-wide standardization to facilitate increasing use of site data in synthesis projects. IMExec has outlined activities that might better enable dynamic loading of site data into Network architecture or promote standardization of data and conformance to best practices including:
- improvements in completeness and accuracy of metadata
- evaluation and improvement of linkages between metadata and data
- evaluation and improvement of data quality
- automating EML generation for new data types (e.g. GIS, non-tabular, or non-LTER data)
- development of software tools or stylesheets to improve the usefulness of EML to LTER sites and end-users
- adoption of emerging Network standards (e.g. keyword, attribute, or taxonomy vocabularies)
- initiatives promoting or improving standardization and integration with LNO developments (e.g. refinement or expansion of current best practices for EML)
- exploring dataset annotation with emerging semantic tools
There may be an advantage to co-development of approaches among sites and it is likely that workshops will be necessary to develop standardized approaches and best practices. The NIS Advisory Committee (NISAC) has proposed that taskforces of mostly LTER personnel be assembled to work out required standards and best practices, and efforts might be combined with IM production workshops or other synthesis working groups. IMExec will be discussing potential workshops to best prepare sites for participation in the NIS at the annual IMExec meeting in February. With this in mind we will be exploring necessary metrics for evaluating site EML and consider more advanced tools for validation of site data and metadata. We will also be examining the NIS framework and development timeline as outlined in the Operational Plan to help guide our future planning. This is a challenging, busy and exciting time for all site information managers and the IMExec Committee. The IMC co-chairs have been successful in sharing the workload and stay in close communication, and we look forward to upcoming workshops and new opportunities for improving and better integrating our site and network information systems.