Because good research needs good data

Social Science & Humanities

Metadata standards

DDI - Data Documentation Initiative

An international standard for describing data from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Expressed in XML, the DDI metadata specification supports the entire research data life cycle.

Encoded Archival Description (EAD)

A standard for encoding archival finding aids using XML in archival and manuscript repositories, implementing the recommendations of the International Council on Archives ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description.

MIDAS-Heritage

A British cultural heritage standard for recording information on buildings, archaeological sites, shipwrecks, parks and gardens, battlefields, areas of interest and artefacts.

OAI-ORE - Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange

Defines standards for the description and exchange of aggregations of Web resources.

QuDEx - Qualitative Data Exchange Format

A qualitative data exchange model for the archiving and interchange of data.

SDMX - Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange

A set of common technical and statistical standards and guidelines to be used for the efficient exchange and sharing of statistical data and metadata.

Extensions

CARARE metadata schema

An application profile of the MIDAS Heritage standard intended for delivering metadata to the CARARE service environment about an organisation’s online collections, monument inventory database and digital objects.

CESSDA MLI - Council of European Social Science Data Archives Minimum Level of Information

A common base profile of DDI for use by the member archives of CESSDA.

GESMES/TS - GEneric Statistical MESsage for Time Series

An extension of SDMX used to exchange statistical data and metadata.

Tools

DDI on Rails

Server-side software for building a data portal, with a particular focus on survey datasets. It uses DDI to provide access to the data at the level of concepts and variables. For an example of it in use, see the SOEPinfo data portal.

DDI Tools

The Data Documentaion Initiative website's list of tools to implement the DDI standard.

FISH Interoperability Toolkit

A suite of tools using the MIDAS Heritage metadata standard to facilitate the process of moving information between the wide variety of information systems used to record the historic environment.

Istat SDMX Framework Project

A suite of tools for managing data and metadata in SDMX.

SDMX Editor

A simple tool for managing and accessing statistical metadata, using the SDMX framework.

SDMX Mapping Assistant

A tool to facilitate the mapping between the structural metadata provided by an SDMX-ML Data Structure Definition and those that reside in a database of a dissemination environment.

SDMX Tool Repository

A list of software tools supporting the SDMX standard.

Use Cases

CESSDA Catalogue

Provides a seamless interface to datasets from social science data archives across Europe using the CESSDA MLI profile of DDI.

DDI Projects

The Data Documentation Initiative website's list of projects adopting or encouraging DDI as a standard.

DDI Use Case Literature

Links to DDI 3 use case papers, which were the outcomes of a workshop held at the Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics in Wadern, Germany, November 2-6, 2009.

English Heritage Listed Buildings System

A case study of the use of the MIDAS XML Monument schema as a vehicle for storing data exported from a major heritage sector information system, the English Heritage Listed Building System (LBS).

Eurostat

The statistical office of the European Union, which implementats SDMX in a number of projects.

ICPSR - Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

A data archive providing leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community; all metadata conforms to the DDI standard.

Open Archives Inititative

Develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.

SDMX Implementations

The SDMX website's list of current and planned practical implimentations from national and international organisations.

The Centre for Digital Music Research Data Repository

Used by researchers at C4DM to share their research data with their colleagues and others in the digital music research community, this repository uses the DataCite metadata schema to describe its holdings.

The Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) Data Archive

Provides members of the scholarly community with access to files associated with scholarly studies for the purpose of replication, for all studies conducted by ISPS-affiliated researchers. ISPS metadata records conform to DDI requirements and include a minimal set of Dublin Core metadata elements.

UK ADS - UK Archeology Data Service

The ADS collects, catalogues, manages, preserves, and encourages re-use of digital resources created by archaeologists. It promotes good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology, provides technical advice to the research community, and supports the deployment of digital technologies. Its catalogue records are based on Dublin Core.

UKDA - UK Data Archive

Curator of the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom, the archive uses DDI as the basis for its catalogue records.