Metadata Aggregation – A Critical Component of Research Infrastructure for the Future

Abstract

The development of research data management infrastructure and services and making research data more discoverable and accessible to the research community is a key priority at the national, state and individual university level. This presentation will discuss and reflect upon a collaborative project between Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology to commission a Metadata Hub or Metadata Aggregation service based upon open source software components. It will describe the role that metadata aggregation services play in modern research infrastructure and argue that this role is a critical one. This presentation will also discuss the project's implementation of a metadata aggregator from a University perspective. It will cover where the aggregator sits in the overall enterprise architecture and some lessons learnt which will be of benefit to other Universities interested in deploying such an aggregator. Finally this presentation will show how other research institutions can obtain this open source product. Guidance on project managing the deployment of the system will also be addressed.