DATABASE WORKING BEE
Saturday 15th August (all day)
Contact: Mark Westoby, Ian Wright, Amy Zanne
No registration, participation by invitation
BACKGROUND
Several databases are arising through activities of the ARC-NZ Research Network for Vegetation Function (VFN). It’s desirable that these be well documented with metadata, explanation and cautionary notes so that when they eventually enter the public domain, they are able to be used safely by other researchers asking new questions. This one-day gathering aims to advance the documentation of VFN-related databases, and to share experiences and tools for structuring, documenting, and checking databases.
Topics for discussion will include:
• What kinds of documentation or metadata are most important to provide?
• When do you need a data structure more complicated than spreadsheets?
• Procedures and tools for data-checking. What would be useful? What is available?
• What is an appropriate time-course for making databases available beyond the immediate group of people involved with compiling them? (A wiki at http://bluwiki.com/go/Vegfunction_data_sharing describes discussion about this within the Network up to the present.)
Besides discussion and sharing of tools, our main aim during the day is to actually move along the process of getting each database and its documentation improved, as much as possible.
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