Data Management Training/meeting notes 20160113

Attendees: Nancy Hoebelheinrich, David Bassendine, John Faundeen, Tamar Norkin, Kevin Browne, and Sophie Hou

Agenda and Notes:

1) Quick catch-up of session at ESIP Winter

Nancy introduced David Bassendine, who will be helping us regarding the technical aspect of the Clearinghouse project.
Nancy also provided a recap of the breakout sessions that she and Sophie hosted during the ESIP Winter Meeting 2016.

Link to the "Data Management Training Resources Survey and Clearinghouse Project Report" breakout session at ESIP Winter Meeting 2016 (notes and presentation files are included): http://commons.esipfed.org/node/8755

2) Intro to David Bassendine & Kevin Browne who will help us with Technical Approach / Requirements for the Clearinghouse

David provided an overview of the Commons, which was built based on Drupal.

Basically, the Clearinghouse project could be hosted within the Commons as part of the ESIP site. However, we would also like to add any additional links or sites that are part of the project. The additional links to other sites, such as those of USGS, would enable a kind of extra “branding” that would better show the collaboration efforts involved with this project.
John - Suggested the branding on our Clearinghouse project website is important because it would allow people to quickly understand and associate the site content with their own context.
David - Also suggested that we might be able to create a sub-domain under ESIP’s home page (http://esipfed.org/). The sub-domain would appear as another collaboration area under the “Explore” tab, just as how the Commons and the Testbed activities are currently showing up.

Nancy to double check with Erin to confirm if this is still the plan.

All the features that are currently available on the Commons page (http://commons.esipfed.org/) would also be available for the Data Management Training Clearinghouse’s sub-domain.
The content for the sub-domain would need to be created, and the “facets” for search and browse would need to be associated with the metadata for each resource of the Clearinghouse, which would have some differences from the content of the other resources on the ESIP Drupal site.

3) Discussion of Technical Approach / Requirements: See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TxKrrBThwMeNAOGvv5JWp60HZiq4FeKSPoadeI7dU9c/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs

Currently, the plan for the content of the Clearinghouse is to collect and feature only the links of the resources instead of the actual content.
Link to Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI): http://www.lrmi.net/the-specification

Some very general descriptive metadata (such as Dublin Core?) as well as key fields from the LRMI are the metadata schemas envisioned at this point for the Clearinghouse.resources. The exact metadata fields will need to be determined as one of the first steps if the project is funded.

Link to USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) Science Support Framework that will be used to organized the Clearinghouse content: http://www.usgs.gov/cdi/cdi-ssf/cdi-ssf-components.pdf

Direct link to the USGS Data Lifecycle Overview: http://www.usgs.gov/datamanagement/why-dm/lifecycleoverview.php
We thought we could start by associating the steps of this data lifecycle to the resources added to the Clearinghouse as one of the initial “educational framework” (term used in LRMI) tags, along with, possibly, the DataONE lifecycle. This approach would be the starting point for organizing the Clearinghouse project (and creating the browse list) with the expectation that other frameworks could be added, if appropriate. It appears that even when other participants or users of the Clearinghouse are only aware of other data lifecycles or educational frameworks, the stages of other data lifecycles could be translated to the stages of the USGC data lifecycle without too much “lost in translation”.

Graphical representation of the browsing capability would be helpful in enhancing the ease of use of the Clearinghouse.

Controlled vocabularies would also be used to tag the resources accordingly, so that the same resource would be identified correctly for the different names used for the stages of lifecycle.
We will start with one Content Type (learning resource, for example), so that we can use only one overall metadata template, but provide a controlled vocabulary for “resource type” within the metadata schema, e.g., for online tutorials, webinars, presentations, videos, etc.

Sophie/Nancy - Making sure a tagging field for identifying the “resource type” is available. This can allow the resources to have graphical distinctions, so that this would allow the users to quickly understand the categories of the resources.

We are expecting that the metadata for the initial phase will have to be added manually, but we will investigate whether it would be the feasibility for pulling metadata from key sources, e.g., web services, or via APIs designed to allow export of the metadata

David will help in reviewing further the potential/possible methods and costs for this capability, such as from:

DataONE’s resources: https://www.dataone.org/education-modules
USGS Data Management training site (including contacting Viv Hutchison and/or Heather Henkel); [Tamar to send contact information and any other information about the USGS resources and/or the API].

Depending on the capabilities that are readily available, this implementation might need to be staged for the second phase of the project.
We expect that the entry of the metadata will be done by users who will need to have a login to the ESIP site and with a role assigned to them. It would also involve either an editing or peer review process before being “published” to the Clearinghouse.

One advantage of user logins is the ability to assess metrics such as # of contributors, # of hits, etc. which would be useful information for funders as well as contributors to the Clearinghouse.
John - Also suggested the role of moderator?
David - Would we want to lock the submission until the submission is reviewed?

John - We have to set the review time appropriately, so that we do not end up “freezing” the submissions inadvertently, such as in the case of editors are on vacation and are not able to review the submissions in a timely manner.

We will start with the “editor” instead of “moderator” as the name for one of the main roles for now.

Nancy mentioned the idea for implementing a metadata submission form, which could be made available after successful log in.

We will be able to associate some help text to fields on the metadata input form to explain terms, provide definitions and a Glossary as well as link to an online guide (probably on the page generally rather than in the help text for an individual item?)
Sophie - How about the creation of the citation for the resources?

David - We currently have capabilities to generate the citation automatically through Drupal. However, we will need to decide where the information for the components of the citation will come from, and will assess this feature for a 2nd phase.

We would like to be able to associate some sort of evaluation of the resources, either in the form of comments or rating. Instead of comments, perhaps being able to rate the resources would be a better mechanism for users to provide feedback. However, we will also need to determine who will have the right to rate the resources and how to provide them with the access to rate.

Requiring users to sign-in might be helpful as the starting point to filter out any users that might have malicious intends.
Rating versus comment implementation will be placed at the end of the Phase 1.

There is a module that is currently available within Drupal that could be used to check the validity of URL.

David will check into this function and get back to Nancy.

David will also help in checking the ability to associate both context sensitive help information and an online guide to the description form where appropriate.

4) Overall review of what needs to be done to complete & submit the full proposal. See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w3hXUJSDNJ5YBIay1uiH2_fPNFq9kjGmlCD51ove7Ug/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs

Hosting fee might not be a concern right now, but might need to be reviewed again if we generate a lot of traffics to the Clearinghouse project site.

5) Division of labor & timeline for writing the proposal

John - will only be able to review because he will need to write his own proposals as well.
Nancy - will work on the 7 page narrative sections with help on the technical approach from Kevin and David.
Sophie - has provided content for the “Scope” and “Project Experience and Collaboration” sections as well as to help in reviewing.
Tamar - will be able to contribute to the parts of the proposal outside the narratives, such as the Cover Page, etc. as well as to format the final proposal; can also work on the budget section with Nancy and JC.
David - will help in providing the technical features that could be implemented via Drupal, so that Tamar and Nancy could help in prioritizing which features would be appropriate for which phase of the project.
Kevin - can also help in reviewing.
Tamar & Nancy will contact JC to see how he might be able to help.

6) Anything else? Need for another call / mtg?

We hope to do most of the discussion / evaluation online, but will use the Doodle poll info in case another call is warranted.