III.2: Documentation of Data
Advocate on Issues of Documentation of Data Other Information:
Metadata standards have long been a central issue for the data community. IASSIST members played an instrumental role in the
establishment of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard and continue to educate its members in the documentation
and distribution of data in this format. In the next five years, IASSIST efforts at advocating metadata standards for numeric
and qualitative data will expand from developing standards to promoting their implementation in a variety of different communities.
In the data community, IASSIST shares responsibility with the DDI Alliance (of which it is a member) of building a dialog
with both public and private data providers that stresses the benefits of the DDI as a distribution standard. In the Digital
Library community, IASSIST members face the challenge of both educating users and patrons about the DDI standard as well as
ensuring that the DDI is well integrated into other library metadata initiatives. Activities in this strategy could include:
§ Collaborate with the DDI Alliance to encourage data providers to adopt the DDI standard for data distribution. § Provide
training for data producers eager to support the standard. IASSIST should devote time to increasing the adaptation of the
DDI standard by encouraging DDI projects within the organization as well as DDI services that link data producers and distributors.
§ Participate in other metadata standards groups to ensure that DDI integration and crosswalks are available
Indicator(s):
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