Metadata and Preservation in Geosciences: Issues at Scale

Abstract

As the environment and climate have increasing impact on the economic sustainability of our country, scientists are being compelled through their own interest or through directives from funding agencies to share the results of their research, which often take the form of collections of data. Sharing collections, particularly at scale where the volumes are large, introduces numerous challenges that we discuss in the context of our research and additional challenges that we point out as unaddressed problems. We discuss in particular provenance collection with a system independent collection tool, Karma, the XMC Cat application schema friendly metadata catalog, and the integration of data streams into a workflow composer, XBaya. We conclude with a discussion of the goals of the Data to Insight Center within the Pervasive Technologies Institute of which the Center for Data and Search Informatics and the Digital Library Program have a role.