Using Structured Metadata to Manage Forestry Research Information: A New Approach
摘要
Documentation of field datasets and preservation of project information are important for resolving forest management problems. The Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI), Taipei, Taiwan and the University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA, USA collaborated to conduct information management research and to develop a system to help scientists acquire and document large numbers of datasets and other research information, without requiring researchers to develop knowledge of information technologies. We chose the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) as the standard to document all research data, and set up a Metacat (metadata catalog) server for TFRI. The Metacat server manages all modules of an EML document database, which are able to store, replicate, query, validate, transform, and authenticate documents, as well as manage user access. In total, 208 EML documents had been created and evaluated by the end of 2006. These EML documents reflect the diversity of forestry research in Taiwan. Although the EML standard is more suitable for biological and ecological fields, EML has been adapted by the broad forest science community, including forest utilization research. The Metacat system should be useful to the forestry community for creating, storing, managing, and retrieving research data. Thus, the system meets the basic requirement of scientists to develop a data legacy. Our tools allow researchers to automate basic quality assurance processes (i.e., data type. data range, and spatial distribution) and correct mistakes found by the system.