I asked my colleague Marco Fahmi to post this as a guest post. It came my way as a part of an email exchange in which another colleague had a question regarding their task of recording previous work in an ecological field study:
ideally in such a way that we would end up with a complete metadata
profile of previous work carried out. I would also like to see the
establishment of a system that could also be used by the group going
forward to keep track of information and data produced at the
site. I hear you have been involved with establishing the
a metadata reporting system. How does this effort currently stand,
is it online? I was also wondering if you would be amenable to sharing
what you have with us with the hope that i could use this as a model
for our own system.
Our colleague Sheila responded first that:
All metadata are created using a standard template document and then transfered into a software package called Morpho. Metadata are then uploaded with the data to the Australian Supersite Network (ASN) Portal http://www.tern-supersites.net.au/knb/. Any other useful documents are uploaded to the website http://www.tern-supersites.net.au either under the specific supersite tab on the left hand menu or under the Publications - Resources for SuperSite Users tab.
Marco says:
Morpho is an open source piece of software designed to host all kinds of ecological data. More information about how we use it at ASN can be found here: http://www.tern-supersites.net.au/index.php/data/repository-tutorial
Morpho should be enough for an individual researcher to organise and describe their personal data collection. If you want to share the data with colleagues or publish them online, then you will also need Metacat. There is a worldwide Metacat server available from the link account. All you need to do is request an account and connect to it via Morpho. Alternatively you can set up your own; but then you will need your own server and tech knowhow to configure it (and maintain it).
For technical reasons, we have our own server running an older version of the Metacat software. You are welcome to use it if you wish (Shiela can issue you an account to log in and upload). We are also happy to provide assistance if you want to set something a standalone server for DRO. (Like any other piece of infrastructure, someone will need to look after the server after it is set up, so that’s probably a decision that will need to be considered carefully).
My comment:
"Morpho should be enough for an individual researcher to organise
and describe their personal data collection"
I agree, but would emphasise the should and then say but … Ultimately I’d like to see something as easy and intuitive as iTunes for music or Endnote and Mendeley for bibliographies, but…
