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| Workshop Title: |
LTER Information Managers Meeting: Design of Query Interface to LTER Data Catalog: Controlled Vocabularies Working Group (2:30 - 5 pm) |
| Report: |
Download Report | View Details
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| Organizer(s): |
Nicole Kaplan - SGS, John Porter - VCR |
| Abstract: |
This ASM session will discuss ongoing work in the design of query interfaces for LTER data through the use of controlled vocabularies, and develop plans for additional work. A common challenge for researchers involves discovery of data and information of interest. A working group formed at the 2005 LTER Information Management meeting developed a strategy for evaluating existing resources and possible collaborations in the development of a hierarchical controlled vocabulary for describing and discovering data sets. The LTER MetaCat system does implement a rudimentary browse interface with six major categories with 15-20 terms each (total ~80), but the consensus of the group was that a richer hierarchy would be valuable addition. Currently the keywords used to characterize most LTER datasets are sparse and uncontrolled, meaning that they are specified entirely by the data creator and are inconsistent in their application. In this workshop, we would like to continue to identify possible ways of improving data discovery through the use of controlled vocabularies, with the goal of improving searchability and improving the “browse” interface.
Subsequent to the 2005 IM meeting, keywords and key terms have been extracted from LTER metadata and bibliographic citations and tallied by number of sites and number of occurances. The frequency of use of these keywords will be compared to existing thesauri that are already being developed. We have begun to evaluate existing resources and possible collaborations in the development of a hierarchical controlled vocabulary for describing data sets. These resources include the GEMET (http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET), which has the potential to translate terms to other languages and the NBII Thesaurus (http://nbii-thesaurus.ornl.gov). Additionally, the SEEK project, in collaboration with NCEAS, is also developing additional ontologies that should be evaluated. There are also more general resources such as Wikipedia that may be additional sources for ontology information. At this ASM session, interested participants will discuss next steps in the evaluation process and will explore developing prototype applications that capitalize on such existing thesauri and ontologies for the LTER Metacat query interface and/or creating "enriched" Ecological Metadata Language Documents.
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| Format: |
Ancillary |
| Sessions requested: |
2 |
| Dates requested: |
None
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| Comments: |
This session will be part of the LTER Information Managers' meeting |
| Working Group disciplines: |
Informatics ,
Information Technology ,
Computer Science |
| LTER Planning Grant questions: |
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| Equipment requested: |
LCD projector |
| Official Participants: |
Jonathan Walsh - BES
Suzanne Remillard - AND
Jincheng Gao - KNZ
Inigo San Gil - LNO
Duane Costa - LNO
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