Making Sense of Metadata Mess: Alignment & Risk Assessment for Diatom Data Use Case

TL;DR

This paper explores metadata challenges and solutions in digitizing Diatom collections, focusing on alignment, standardization, and risk assessment to improve accessibility and data quality.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive study on metadata standards, alignment mapping, and risk analysis specific to Diatom herbarium digitization efforts.

Findings

Metadata standards review and framework adaptation

Baseline alignment mapping of diatom metadata

Risk assessment of data curation practices

Abstract

Biologists study Diatoms, a fundamental algae, to assess the health of aquatic systems. Diatom specimens have traditionally been preserved on analog slides, where a single slide can contain thousands of these microscopic organisms. Digitization of these collections presents both metadata challenges and opportunities. This paper reports on metadata research aimed at providing access to a digital portion of the Academy of Natural Sciences' Diatom Herbarium, Drexel University. We report results of a 3-part study covering 1) a review of relevant metadata standards and a microscopy metadata framework shared by Hammer et al., 2) a baseline metadata alignment mapping current diatom metadata properties to standard metadata types, and 3) a metadata risk analysis associated with the course of standard data curation practices. This research is part of an effort involving the transfer of these digital slides to an new system, DataFed, to support global accessible. The final section of this paper includes a conclusion and discusses next steps.