Climate Data Just Became More Accessible
The White House administration has launched a new online tool to educate and increase awareness into links between climate change and health. The interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program recently unveiled its Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health (MATCH) platform. This interesting news was found on E2 Wire, The Hill’s Energy & Environment Blog in their post titled, “Obama officials roll out climate and health data tool.”
This digital platform is accessible to the public, with over 9,000 health, environment, and climate science sources of data to search and find.
MATCH can aid in making information available to researchers, scientists, and the public alike, to aid in research, inform, and educate.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
The Clues We Follow
Implementing a digital asset management (DAM) system can be challenging. Many factors pose hurdles of varying degrees: asset ingestion, building the database, relevant and descriptive metadata, to name a few. It is key to make the assets descriptive enough to make them worth the time to search and find them. Image & Data Manager brought this information to our attention in their article, “Designing a Controlled Vocabulary for DAM.”
There is no limit as to the criteria by which we organize data. Your descriptors can include genre, subject, identify visual clues, geographic and time spatial clues, as well as synonyms. Search results can be enhanced by the clues we leave on the data.
Another tool that enhances your search experience is a taxonomy. A strong standards-based taxonomy is one with true integrity. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
Protecting the Data
Confidentiality of data is always a concern. With the prevalence of the web, it only becomes more of a challenge to keep your data secure. Recently in Australia, this topic was addressed in parliament after an inquiry into why hundreds of highly sensitive Fitzgerald inquiry documents, including those detailing historic investigations into some high-profile Queenslanders, had been accidentally made available to the public. In addition, thousands of others had been inadvertently shredded.
State archivist Janet Prowse told the Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee that the metadata – an online index containing detailed descriptions of the inquiry documents, including surveillance reports and operation targets – was easily found. “A researcher with basic web searching skills would be able to find and locate metadata,” Ms. Prowse said.
This intriguing information was brought to our attention by The Australian News in their article, “Sensitive information from Fitzgerald Inquiry available to anyone with basic web skills, hearing told.”
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
New Enhancements Unveiled
Colectica has released their latest enhancement to the data documentation software – Colectica 4.1. Their software is based on open standards metadata from the Data Documentation Initiative and builds on previous versions. This interesting news was brought to our attention on Digital Journal in their article, “Colectica Unveils New Version of Data Documentation Software Using Open Standards Metadata.”
Colectica 4.1 is available now for both software evaluation and to current customers. Colectica offers several software tools: Colectica Designer, Colectica Repository, and Colectica Portal. All of these use open standards to allow for interoperability with other tools.
One of the greatest advantages in contributing to open source is the ability to collaborate with a diverse, enthusiastic community.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
Metadata and Social Search
Digitalsmiths provides the technology to determine what’s happening in a video moment by moment. This capability can then be used by cable operators or streaming video providers to offer personalized recommendations to viewers. They have added to that experience by offering social recommendations to their product offering. This creates a more dynamic way for users to search and discover videos from those providers. Gigaom brought this news to our attention in their article, “Digitalsmiths adds social search and recommendations.”
By providing time-based metadata, the users are able to know moment-by-moment and scene-by-scene what’s happening, which actors are on screen, and so forth. Adding social media to the metadata tracking creates a unique opportunity for users to use the data to its fullest advantage.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
The Key to Being Prepared
May 16, 2013
Posted in Autoindexing, indexing, metadata
With the preparations amplifying for the ICD-10 coding classification transition, the demand for trained medical coders is expected to increase. It is reported that many current medical coders are planning on retirement before the switch, leaving an even lesser amount to be trained. Becker’s ASC Review brought this news to our attention in their article, “Demand for Certified Professional Coders to Increase With ICD-10.”
Complex coding requires training. Access Innovations, developer of the M.A.I. machine-assisted indexing system and specializing in complex coding, tagging, and indexing, provides a range of services that deliver tag integrity. Access Innovations provides training to a client’s staff and then offers quality assurance and validation services that can assist in minimizing the risk of a coding error and identify inappropriately applied tags.
Many widely used tagging systems lack the user-friendly interface and may not implement a rigorous ANSI compliant coding subsystem. Access Innovations’ solutions are ANSI compliant and implement state-of-the-art technology to speed tagging and reduce errors. For more information, contact Access Innovations.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
Improving Access
Trying to improve public access to government documents, the Justice Department is now using metadata in its effort to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act. Citizens will now be able to find information with a simple search on sites like www.foia.gov.
Since metadata is information about information but in a machine-readable format, computers can easily find and categorize a document or image. The Department of Justice is using this approach to support its Open Government Plan, and even better, they are working on a set of standards to manage and support metadata tagging.
This interesting information was found on Fierce IT Management in their article, “DOJ metatagging plan will make all federal FOIA documents searchable, accessible.” Of course we are excited about the standards. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
It is All Perspective
Two billion is a large number, regardless of whether you are referring to dollars or granules of sand. WorldCat has reported the addition of its two billionth holding. As the most comprehensive online database of resources available, this milestone gives me pause.
This impressive and somewhat daunting piece of news was found on OCLC in their post, “WorldCat database reaches 2 billion holdings.” The monumental entry was from the University of Alberta Libraries in Edmonton and was for the e-book, Evaluation of the City of Lakes Family Health Team Patient Portal Pilot Project: Final Report, published in 2012 by the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research.
WorldCat was created in 1971 for libraries to share cataloging information from a central database. It took the OCLC cooperative almost 34 years, from August 26, 1971 to August 11, 2005, to add one billion holdings in WorldCat. It has taken just seven years and eight months to add the next billion holdings.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
The Strength of Metadata
Organizations are facing the constant challenge of handling big data by looking beyond storage. They are seeking to understand how to analyze large data sets to consider the tags or labels that give the data context over time. This interesting topic was found on Tech Target in their article, “Metadata practices gaining momentum as companies tackle ‘big data’.”
If companies ignore metadata, they will be forfeiting the comprehensive insights that it can bring to the game. Metadata makes digital content findable.
However, findability works only when a proper taxonomy is in place. Proper indexing against a strong standards-based taxonomy increases the findability of data. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
Metadata Headlining at Conference
Colectica has been selected to give several presentations at the upcoming International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST) conference in Cologne, Germany later this month. This interesting news was found on PRWeb in their article, “Colectica Will Present Metadata Software at the IASSIST 2013 Conference.”
One paper, titled “Integrating Colectica, Nesstar, and DDI-Lifecycle,” will be presented in collaboration with Nesstar. They will highlight how DDI-Lifecycle version 3 can be integrated with the Nesstar server. Another paper, titled “Colectica for Excel: Increasing Data Accessibility using Open Standards,” will also be presented.
You can learn more about the conference, speakers, and registration information by going to their website.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.