The Challenge of Qualitative Data:
Standardizing metadata structures and the DDI

7^th –9^th December 2011

Gothenburg, Sweden

What, Where and Why?

Calling all DDI Users in Europe who are actively working with qualitative metadata!

A 3-day workshop is being held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 7–9th December 2011 after the third European DDI Users Group Meeting (EDDI) to discuss the challenges of qualitative data.

This meeting is a continuation of the work already done by the DDI Alliance Working Group (WG) on Qualitative Data. This face-to-face meeting offers us an opportunity to produce a detailed technical report on recommendations for modifying and improving the current DDI-Lifecycle Specification, and a best practice paper on using DDI with qualitative data. These topics cover the second half of the meeting from Day 2 afternoon to Day 3. The programme details will be developed in Gothenburg.

The meeting is open to everybody interested in contributing to this work. We welcome participants who are already working with archiving qualitative data and technical staff who are charged with providing metadata and access solutions in their archives.

The workshop is sponsored by the DDI Alliance and is being hosted by the Swedish National Data Service (SND) based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Organizing Committee are Louise Corti (UKDA), Arja Kuula and Jani Hautamäki (FSD), Arofan Gregory (Metadata Technologies, North America), and Joachim Wackerow (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences).

Who should attend?

The meeting welcome participants already part of the DDI Alliance WG who are working closely with archiving qualitative data. Technical knowledge of metadata is a basic requirement so you can fully participate. If you are charged with handing qualitative data ingest, processing, discovery or visualization but are not metadata-savvy, you will need to bring a technical colleague with you. We welcome technical staff who are charged with providing metadata and access solutions in their archives.

What is EDDI?

EDDI is designed to provide an annual European forum where DDI Users from Europe can gather to showcase their work and their progress toward DDI adoption, as well as discuss any questions or challenges they may have about the standard. EDDI will include presentations, poster sessions, and discussion sessions. The meeting will close with "meet the experts" session in which users will have a chance to talk about their experiences with representatives from the Technical Implementation Committee (TIC) of the DDI Alliance. The philosophy of EDDI is to be an open, inclusive DDI community-building activity.

Additional information

Further details (the exact location, accommodation, lunch arrangements, etc) will be available in due course on EDDI 2011 web page: http://www.iza.org/eddi11

We invite all individuals interested in participating to write an email to eddi11qualitative@iza.org. When you apply please describe your experience in the area and your possible contribution.

There will be two workshops with a DDI focus offered at Schloss Dagstuhl, Leibniz Center for Informatics, in Wadern, Germany, in September 2011:

Semantic Statistics for Social, Behavioural, and Economic Sciences: Leveraging the DDI Model for the Web

September 12-16, 2011

This workshop, to be held at Schloss Dagstuhl in Wadern, Germany, will examine the metadata model of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) used in the Social, Behavioural, and Economic (SBE) sciences, and design an implementation of that model using the Semantic Web standards (RDF, OWL, etc.). Invited participants will represent the user community (data librarians, archivists, researchers, and data producers), DDI experts, and experts in the Semantic Web technologies and standards. The goal of the workshop is to develop a best practice for the publication of microdata and related metadata into the Linked Data Web, which might be put forward as a standard for use with data in this domain for dissemination on the Web.

The 2nd Annual European DDI Users Group Meeting (EDDI10) took place at the SURFfoundation in Utrecht, The Netherlands, on December 8-9 with almost 70 people from 13 countries attending. Additionally, courses on DDI and SDMX, and a DDI developers workshop took place prior to EDDI10.

The slides of 24 presentations are now on-line at the EDDI10 Web site:

http://www.iza.org/eddi10

http://www.iza.org/conference_files/eddi10/Program_2010-12-04_final3.html

As announced at the end of the conference, the host of next year's EDDI will be the Swedish National Data Service (SND) in Gothenburg.

The Technical Implementation Committee (TIC) of the DDI Alliance will meet September 20-24, 2010, in Minneapolis, MN, to work on the next iteration of the DDI 2 and 3 development lines.