Speaker
Description
Producing, harmonising and updating metadata are tasks metadata curators have to do regularly in order to make sure catalogues and their contents stay up-to-standards.
Drawing from the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) experience, this workshop aims at sharing about new procedures implemented in the last two years in order to support the needs for generating and manipulating DDI-XML files. The goal is for attendees to understand these procedures and be able to adapt them to their specific needs.
The first block will focus on the process for study-level documentation implemented at INED to facilitate data collection from research teams and accelerate the documentation writing process. This consists of an R script drawing information from a form (in our case a Microsoft Word one) and exporting it to a DDI-Codebook 2.5 XML file. The goal will be both to explain how the script works and to touch on some ways it could be adapted to other institutions standards or needs in terms of documentation. I will also quickly showcase the script used for variable-level documentation.
The second block will present how to use the eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and more specifically how one can use XSL Transformations (XSLT) to transform DDI-XML files. The presentation will consist of a quick overview of XSL, and will then focus on providing working examples (notably add attributes, add, replace or reorder tags).
Intended audience: metadata producers and/or curators working with DDI-Codebook 2.5
Pre-requisites: good knowledge of XML and of DDI-Codebook schema, good knowledge of the R language (the script uses the following packages: xml2, XML and xslt).
