Transcript Keeping www.statcan.ca users in the metadata loop Louis Boucher Director,Dissemination Division UNECE Work session on Statistical Dissemination and Communication 12 to 14 September 2006 Washington DC,

Keeping www.statcan.ca users
in the metadata loop
Louis Boucher
Director,Dissemination Division
UNECE Work session on Statistical Dissemination and Communication
12 to 14 September 2006
Washington DC, USA
Serving who ?
• Diverse users with diverse needs and
skills
• Continuous expansion of content
• Data becoming more complex than ever
• Users need help !
Data are only useful as long as you can understand
them !
Serving what ?
• Users need more than specific data
• Need to know about;
–
–
–
–
Source and availability
Applicability and context
Related documentation
Alternatives
• Too much ?
Our task is to present information in an orderly manner
and enable users to make choices.
Who knows !
• It is all there, just get it !
• Taxonomy ?
• Metadata ?
• Metatags ?
• Need easy and intuitive access …
Users can access complex sets of metadata without
actively looking for it if…
Experts know it all !
• Taxonomy is to organize
– Subjects and categories
• Metadata is to describe
– Data, products and programs
• Metatags are to find
– Hidden characteristics of web documents
Used together, these concepts render some consistency of
data from different sources which simplifies its
management and retrieval.
Users need not to know !
• Make these technicalities transparent
• Make their access intuitive
• Proactively present all this “contextual”
information
Simply put, users need to know as little as possible about
our internal processes in order to get all the available
information they need
Caution : metadata at work !
• A live demonstration on www.statcan.ca
Thank you
[email protected]