Metadata and Data Documentation
University of Michigan Library

Metadata and Data Documentation

Tools & Resources

There are a number of great resources available to help researchers find a metadata standard, vocabulary, or tool that best suits their research discipline.

Resources for Finding Metadata Standards and Ontologies

  • Research Data Alliance Metadata Directory The RDA Metadata Directory is a collaborative, open directory of metadata standards applicable to scientific data. Subject areas include arts and humanities, engineering, life sciences, physical sciences & mathematics, social & behavioral sciences, and general research data (multidisciplinary).
  • Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) - LOV provides a searchable repository of vocabularies and ontologies used to describe many different disciplines and domains.
  • Data Documentation Initiative - DDI is an international standard for describing statistical and social science data. It contains a metadata specification, as well as a list of tools to help researchers work with DDI metadata.
  • BioSharing - BioSharing offers a searchable database of metadata standards, markup languages, taxonomies, and other resources for biological and life sciences.
  • BioPortal - BioPortal offers an extensive repository of biomedical ontologies, including a recommender tool to help choose the best ontology for your research.

Name Authority Files

  • ORCID - ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier for researchers worldwide.
  • International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) - ISNI provides a persistent digital identifier for the public identities of people and organizations across all fields of creative activity.
  • Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) - VIAF is an international service designed to provide convenient access to the world's major name authority files, including many authority files maintained by national libraries.
  • Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) - The LCNAF provides authoritative data for names of persons, organizations, events, places, and titles.
  • Union List of Artist Names - The ULAN is a structured vocabulary containing names and other information about artists, patrons, firms, museums, and others related to the production and collection of art and architecture.

Tools for Creating and Managing Metadata

  • File Information Tool Set (FITS) - FITS identifies, validates and extracts technical metadata for a wide range of file formats.
  • JHOVE - JHOVE provides functions to perform format-specific identification, validation, and characterization of digital objects.
  • JHOVE2 - JHOVE2 is open source software for format-aware characterization of digital objects.
  • Exiftool - ExifTool is a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide variety of files. ExifTool is also available as a stand-alone Windows executable and a Macintosh OS X package.
  • Apache Tika - The Apache Tika™ toolkit detects and extracts metadata and text from over a thousand different file types (such as PPT, XLS, and PDF). All of these file types can be parsed through a single interface, making Tika useful for search engine indexing, content analysis, translation, and much more.
  • Microsoft Document Properties - The Document Properties feature in Microsoft Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Access or Excel allow you to attach information about your document to the file.
  • Colectica for Excel - Colectica for Microsoft Excel is a free tool to document your spreadsheet data using the open standard for data documentation.