[eml-dev] International LTER IM Meeting Presentation - What is EML Good for (Suggestions please)

[David Blankman]

I am doing a presentation at the ILTER Information Management workshop in
China April 7 - 12.


I would like any thoughts you may have.In particular, I am looking for
tools, other than Kepler, Morpho, and Metacat that have been built to take
advantage of EML.

My preliminary thoughts are that my presentation should be short - maybe 15
minutes. The main points would be:

   1. EML is primarily a standard for documenting ecological data
   implemented as a series of XML Schemas
   2. Its focus is on individual data files - bottom up (as opposed to
   the European system which starts at the site level and works down)
   3. Best use is data discovery.
   4. Can be used as the basis for semi-automated synthesis
   5. Is very flexible and can be used without a lot of training.
   6. Not adequate for true synthesis
   7. Bottom up approach means that a lot of research context information
   has to be repeated in each file.

*Kristin Vanderbilt's (ILTER IM Committee Chair) comments:*

Please stress what's good about EML (as you list, plus there are reasonably
mature tools that ILTER countries could readily adopt—perhaps include a
slide describing the tools and who uses them) and what EML's shortcomings
are.  The outcome I want from this workshop (which I'm willing to modify, of
course, if there is good reason to), is a Best Practices document indicating
that ILTER countries should now adopt EML and then new tools that
incorporate ontologies will eventually become available (hopefully we can
specify a timeframe) that they can later adopt that will make the ALTER-NET
and EML systems interoperable.  The Chinese use a different system, and we
have to figure out how to make it interoperable, too.    Basically we need
to hear what EML can do, what the ontology system can do on top of that, and
figure out a strategy for a crosswalk.

Thanks,

David
-- 
David Blankman
Director of Information Management, Israel LTER/Ma'arag
Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology
Jacob Blaustein Desert Research Institute
Ben Gurion University
Midreshet Ben Gurion, 84990 Israel
054-685-9345 (cell)
1-505-349-5680 (Skype)
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