Publishing Fine-Grained DDI Metadata: Learnings from Efforts in Three Different RDCs

As the availability of DDI metadata at the variable level is quite low, three German research data centers (DIW Berlin/SOEP, LIfBi, DZHW) collaborated in a KonsortSWD-financed project to make progress in this area. All partners have a metadata system in place that is based on partially multilingual structured metadata at the granular level, including, for example, variable labels, categories, question texts, and keywords. Based on this, they wrote an initial export to DDI-Codebook 2.5. A comparison of these exports led to a suggestion on how the elements within <fileDscr> and <dataDscr> can be used to describe studies with multiple datasets at the variable level using the preexisting metadata. While the exported DDI metadata in XML format could be easily published on a webpage, the project partners also evaluated the options for using the OAI-PMH protocol and available server software. The presentation will discuss the conceptual and technical questions that arise.