Why use metadata?
Metadata provide significant benefits to both the organization that collect data and to those who
subsequently use the data. While metadata creation can sometimes feel like additional work for
someone else’s benefit, metadata are also important to the organization that collect the data for:
- Protecting investment in data collection by:
- improving tracking of data within the organization,
- supporting long-term maintenance of data sets,
- ensuring data are understood and properly used as people change jobs, and
- supporting the organization’s role in regional management and restoration efforts;
- Limiting liability associated with data sharing by:
- documenting the data to avoid misuse or misrepresentation of the data, and
- meeting funding entities’ expectations that data will be shared;
- Improving organizational efficiency by:
- minimizing staff time spent responding to questions about their data,
- providing an inventory of data to enable rapid location of pertinent data, and
- providing information needed to support computer automation.
For organizations that collect data, metadata help enhance the quality, usability and value of data
for internal and external users. Organizations should view metadata creation as integral to their
workflow and metadata as integral to datasets. Organizations are strongly encouraged to begin
metadata documentation during the earliest stages of project planning and to use and maintain
metadata at every stage of their workflow.
A multitude of monitoring programs and organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest collect
research, monitoring, and evaluation data. Each program or organization collects, stores, and
manages monitoring data in unique ways aimed at meeting program-specific objectives.
Metadata facilitate the identification, discovery, assessment, storage, and use of data collected
under widely varying objectives. No data set is complete without a metadata record. These
standardized records describe such important features as why the data set was created, who
created it, how accurate data are, what methodologies were used to develop it, and much more.
Metadata support the use of data by multiple monitoring programs to meet broader objectives
than just the original purpose. Metadata can:
- help avoid data duplication,
- foster sharing of data resources,
- help ensure that data are interpreted and used appropriately,
- preserve institutional memory,
- publicize research, and
- reduce workload required to compile data for regional analyses.