Panel Session 2: Metadata Standards and Implementation

The e-Research ´vision´ of sharing and re-using data requires the agreement, adoption and implementation of rigorous standards for resource description. This panel will review current developments in metadata standards, such as DDI, and address the question of whether they are adequate for meeting these requirements.

Each panel member gave a five minute position statement addressing the panel´s topic. The panel then moved onto an open discussion question and answer session.

Panel Members

Titto Assini

Pasqualino 'Titto' Assini is Head of e-Social Science at the UK Data Archive and Head of System Development at Nesstar Ltd. He has extensive experience in the design of distributed statistical dissemination systems, through its participation in the EU-funded Nesstar and Faster projects and its activity in Nesstar Ltd. He has participated in statistical metadata standard-making activities (DDI) and in statistical metadata projects (Metanet, Cosmos).

Ekkard Mochmann

Dr. h.c. Ekkehard Mochmann born in 1944, studied Economics, Social Sciences and Law at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn. and was granted a honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg Currently he is administrative Director of Central Archive for Empirical Social Research at the University of Cologne and Director of GESIS, the German Social Science Infrastructure Services. He has been expert advisor to the European Science Foundation- Standing Committee for the Social Sciences (ESF-SCSS) for the European Data Base and was member of the Methodology group for the European Social Survey. On the national level he contributed to the German National Science Foundations Memorandum on Quality Criteria for Survey Research. Research interests currently focus on methods of comparative research, integration of the European data base and computer aided content analysis in political research. EU funded project activities include the project management of ZA-EUROLAB under the TMR/LSF activity and the IHP/Access to Research Infrastructures Programme, as well as the EU Network of Economic and Social Science Infrastructure in Europe (NESSIE) and the Co-ordination of the MetaDater project.

T. John Kim

Prof. Kim has been a Fulbright scholar to Germany, a senior Fulbright scholar to Korea, a member of the Geography and Regional Science Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and chair of the National Advisory Committee for GIS Implementation of Korea. He is currently an advisor to the Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA) in Saudi Arabia, is the Head of Delegates from Korea for Technical Committee for International GIS Standardization (ISO/TC 211) and Project Leader for international standard for Multimodal Location Based Services (LBS) for Routing and Navigation for the International Organization for Standards (ISO) and authored an international for LBS numbered as ISO 19134.

Dr. Kim has published 8 books dealing with urban and regional systems analysis, expert systems applications to urban planning and environmental planning, environmental programming evaluation, spatial planning in Indonesia, and transportation engineering and planning. In addition, he has published 22 book chapters, 60 journal articles, and 38 professional articles. He has been Editor of an international journal, The Annals of Regional Science since 1994. He is Endowed Professor of Urban and Regional Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since August 21, 2002.